Email Templates
Email Templates in Salesforce are methods of predefining emails that can be sent manually or through automation, using letterheads, field merges and html formatting.
What is the Benefit?
Email Templates serve as an avenue to structure communications from your orgs users to your customer base. They allow you to have repeatable messaging that is consistent across the business. Salesforce offers both Classic and Lightning variants.
Historically speaking, Classic templates were more broadly used with workflow rules and legacy automation. They are still relevant to existing orgs, but new orgs should consider adopting Lightning Templates as they offer greater flexibility.
Email Templates can be created through simple text, they can utilize letterheads and html formatting, they can even insert fields from related records to help customize bulk communication to the intended recipient.
From an automation perspective email templates can be referenced in flows and apex through Send Email actions. They can also be sent manually from records in Salesforce utilizing the Send Email action. Email Templates utilize a folder structure to help organize and store them, leading to easier maintenance ongoing for Admins.
One thing of note, with the Send Email action on a record itself, users can modify the text in the template before sending.
Types of Email Templates
Classic Templates
Classic Email Templates are the original/legacy version of template creation in Salesforce. They could utilize text, html, letterhead and visualforce in their design. These templates could easily be associated to email alerts and workflow rules. They require selecting a related object so that you can pull the correct merge fields into the template and allowed for easy customization.
Lightning Templates
Lightning Templates offer a more robust styling capability than Classic Alerts. They too could be associated to email alerts and workflow rules historically. More often now, you will find them referenced in flow automation through the Send Email action. Instead of creation through Setup as the Classic Templates were, they are found by using the App Navigator within the main Salesforce navigation.
Who is Impacted?
Admins
Administrators are able to create and maintain templates and folder structures for easy organization and ongoing maintenance.
End Users
Once created, End Users will utilize templates to quickly and consistently communicate with customers.
Customers
Customers will receive more accurate and customized information pertaining to their relationship with the users in Salesforce.