Letter templates

In this article:

• Create a new letter template
• Template categories
• Define the letter
• Default label and envelope templates
• Example templates
• Archived templates

Letter templates are great for mailings that you send out on a regular basis, like acknowledgments, pledge reminders, and renewal notices.

NOTE: It is not possible to use a mailing template for an acknowledgment letter. It is necessary to create an acknowledgment template for an acknowledgment letter in order to take advantage of LGL's built-in acknowledgment tools. 

Create a new letter template

A letter template consists of the following elements:

• Template name (so you can recognize it in a menu)
• Template category (what kinds of mailings the template can be used for)
• The letter itself (Word file plus letter/P.S. content or simple LGL text)
• Default letter/envelope settings

Template categories

Once you have created your templates, when you want to select one to create a new mailing you will see all available templates listed by category. It is a good idea to try to classify these according to their purpose so that you can easily identify them during that process. 

NOTE: Acknowledgment templates are the exception to this rule. It is not possible to create an acknowledgment template by creating a template category and assigning it to your letter because acknowledgments are a special type of mailing. To create an acknowledgment template, please follow these instructions.

Define the letter

The first step in creating the letter for your template is to choose between the two available template types, indicated by the gray buttons below:

For details on how to create the actual letters in either format, please see the following articles:

• Microsoft Word Letters
• Simple LGL Letters

Default label and envelope templates

You can also select a default label or envelope template. These settings can be changed when a template is used for a specific mailing, and they are also handy for Acknowledgment templates. For example, if you always print envelopes with pledge reminders, you can set that in the letter template and then you won't need to reset it for each batch of pledge reminder letters you send.

Example templates

Several example templates are provided for your reference in the Examples section of the Letter Templates page. You can clone these templates and make them your own, or mark them as archived.

NOTE: Cloning is useful when you're using the same Word doc with different content in the Letter Content and/or P.S Content fields. If you're not using those fields, it's just as easy to create a new template with a similar Word file.

To use one of the example templates, navigate to the letter template you want to copy and click Clone:

You will then see that a copy of that letter template has been placed in your Active folder:

Now you can open the template by clicking Edit:

The template consists of both the underlying Word doc as well as the content defined in the Letter Content pane (and optionally in the P.S. Content pane). 

For new users, we recommend placing all content into your Word doc, along with your merge fields. Over time, as you get more comfortable with using letter templates it may become useful to move certain pieces of that content into the Letter Content and/or P.S. Content fields (because then you can make change to sections of content without needing to upload a completely new file into your letter template):

If you open the Word doc for the YearEndTaxTemplate file, you will see the body of the letter is in the Word document, with the merge fields defined. 

Archived templates

If you want to get a template or an example template out of the way but don't want to fully delete it, you can mark it Archived, which will move it from the Active to the Archived tab.