Marketing & Customer Email

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Overview

Cortado doesn’t currently include campaign or bulk-email tooling — there’s no newsletter builder or mass send-to-segment feature. What it does have is a set of controls for the automated emails customers receive during a booking (new inquiry alerts, quote deliveries, payment receipts, and similar transactional messages) plus reusable templates your team can drop into one-off emails. You can customize both so the messages match your brand.

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System Emails

System emails are sent automatically during key events — a new inquiry lands, a quote goes out, a payment clears. The branded layout is fixed, but you can rewrite the subject and body content for each one using a rich-text editor with merge fields. The following system email types can be customized:

• New Inquiry — sent when a prospect submits your inquiry form
• Quote Sent — sent when you send a quote
• Invoice Sent — sent when you send an invoice
• Payment Receipt — sent after a successful payment
• Payment Processing — sent for ACH payments while bank verification is in progress
• Payment Failed — sent when a payment attempt fails
• Refund Processed — sent when a refund is issued

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Customizing a System Email

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New Inquiry Email Customization

The New Inquiry system email has one extra option that the other templates don’t: a customizable View Menu button. This button appears in the email a new prospect receives and links them to your menu or services page. You can customize:

• Button text — for example, “View Our Menu”, “See Our Packages”, or “Browse Services”.
• Button URL — the destination when the button is clicked. Must be a full URL.

If you leave the URL field empty, Cortado falls back to your organization’s website URL configured under Settings > Company > General. That way the button always points somewhere sensible even if you forget to set it.

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Email Templates

Email Templates are reusable bodies your team can drop into the Compose Email sheet on a lead, contact, booking, quote, or invoice page. They’re distinct from system emails: Email Templates live at Settings > Communications > Email Templates and are available org-wide — every user on your team can use them.

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Categories

Templates are organized by category so the right ones surface when you’re composing an email:

• General — universal templates (introductions, thank-yous, follow-ups)
• Inquiry — initial outreach, qualification questions, scheduling a call
• Quote — sending a quote, following up on a quote, addressing questions
• Booking — confirmation messages, day-of details, post-event check-ins
• Invoice — payment reminders, receipt follow-ups, balance notices

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Variables in Templates

Email Templates use the same {{variable}} syntax as system emails and the same inline picker for inserting them. When you insert a template into the Compose Email sheet, variables fill in automatically based on the parent record:

• On a contact, contact variables fill in.
• On a lead or quote, contact + inquiry + quote variables fill in.
• On a booking or invoice, event and invoice variables fill in.

If a variable isn’t relevant to the record you’re composing from, it’s left blank — so you can build flexible templates that work across contexts.

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Variables

Both system emails and templates use the same merge-variable system. The inline variable picker is the source of truth — it groups variables by entity type and shows only the ones available for the template you’re editing. Variable categories include:

• Contact — the customer’s name, email, and phone
• Organization — your business name, website, contact email, and branding fields
• Inquiry — fields submitted on the inquiry form (event type, guest count, requested date, etc.)
• Event — scheduled date, time, duration, location, and guest count
• Sender — the team member sending the email
• Quote — quote total, line items, and acceptance status
• Invoice — invoice number, total, due date, and amount owed
• Payment — payment amount, method, and date
• Refund — refund amount and reason

Available variables differ by template type — the picker only shows the variables you can use in the template you’re editing, so you can’t accidentally insert one that won’t resolve.

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Best Practices

1. Customize New Inquiry and Quote Sent first — these are the highest-stakes first impressions. A warm subject line, a personal opening, and a clear View Menu button beat the defaults every time.
2. Use the Preview tab before saving — sample data in the preview makes typos, broken formatting, and awkward merge fields easy to catch before they go live.
3. Lean on badges, not raw braces — insert variables through the picker so they appear as badges. They’re easier to spot, rearrange, and avoid breaking by accident.
4. Style sparingly — bold a key sentence, link a button, but resist turning the body into a design exercise. Plain, well-written copy converts better than over-styled emails.
5. Build a templates library your whole team uses — a few well-written templates per category (Inquiry follow-up, Quote nudge, Invoice reminder) save your team hours and keep your brand voice consistent.
6. Set the View Menu URL on the New Inquiry email — even if you have a fallback website URL configured, an explicit menu or packages link converts far better than a generic homepage.