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Sequenzy email design settings with callouts showing presets, colors, and the live preview
Email Themes let you control the base visual system for your emails without editing every block by hand. You can define a default theme for your company, then override it for a single email when that message needs a different look. To edit the same colors, fonts and corner shapes as text, together with your voice and design direction, use design.md.

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What you can change

Sequenzy email theme settings with callouts showing type scale and line height
  • Base font size
  • Base line height
  • Heading sizes, weight, letter spacing, and an optional heading font (for serif-headline + sans-body pairings)
  • Content width
  • Email alignment: centered, or on the left like a plain personal email
  • Horizontal container padding
  • Vertical container padding
  • Block spacing
  • Border radius
  • Button padding, label size, and label weight
  • Button style: solid (filled) or outline (transparent with a brand-color border)
  • Button label color, or leave it automatic for a readable color on any fill
  • Outer canvas, content card, nested surface, text, border, link, and primary colors

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Brand-derived themes

When you connect a website, Sequenzy reads the site’s design system and derives a starting theme from it: the real call-to-action color, fill style, corner radius, padding, and label weight of your site’s buttons, your heading scale, weight, and letter spacing, a heading/body font pairing mapped to email-safe stacks, your site’s spacing density, body and heading text colors, card surface and border colors, a light site background, and your wordmark or icon logo sized correctly for email headers. Sequenzy also reads a screenshot of your landing page and layers its look on top: the page’s colors, heading typeface, how headlines highlight words, where the logo sits, and how steps and feature lists are drawn. Everything stays clamped to email-friendly ranges and readable contrast, and nothing overwrites a theme or font you have already customized.

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How it works

There are two layers:
  1. A company theme used as the default for all emails
  2. An email theme override used only for a specific email
If an email does not have its own override, it inherits the company theme automatically.

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Presets

Sequenzy email theme settings with callouts showing surfaces and border colors
In Settings → Email Design, open Theme details and use Start from a theme to begin from a built-in preset:
  • Default
  • Soft
  • Editorial
  • Bold
A preset replaces your text sizes, spacing and corners at once, and you can keep adjusting the values after selecting one. Emails you build yourself use these values as they are. For AI-designed emails, your design direction can still adjust heading fonts, heading sizes and corners on top of them.

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The three settings on Email Design

Settings → Email Design has three parts, and each says which emails it affects:
  • Brand defaults: logo, brand color, font and theme details. Every email starts from these.
  • Header and footer: Logo and full footer (emailPreset: "branded") or Compact footer, no logo ("minimal"). New emails of every kind get it: designed, simple text and hand-built. Existing emails keep their own. With the compact option, a new blank email starts as an empty letter: one empty paragraph and the compact footer, ready to type into. While a saved AI style exists, AI-written emails use its header and footer instead.
  • AI email design: how Sequenzy AI writes new emails. Default style chooses Designed emails with sections and imagery or Simple text notes with one button. Simple text emails still use your theme, header and footer. Until you pick one, AI designs emails and asks the first time you write one with AI; Ask me each time clears your choice. This section also shows your saved AI style and holds your design direction.
The header and footer and the default style are separate on purpose: a simple text email can still carry your logo and full footer, and a designed email can use the compact footer. The Live preview shows your most recently edited email of the selected default style, with the brand defaults and the header and footer you are editing applied, so you can judge them on real content before saving. Emails made of pasted HTML are skipped. Until you have a designed or simple text email, it shows a sample email instead. Agents set the same values with update_company (emailPreset, emailStylePreference, where null clears the style choice) or sequenzy companies update --email-preset branded|minimal --email-style visual|plain|ask.

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Reuse an email’s style for AI

Open AI style in the AI sidebar header and choose Save as AI style. Settings → Email Design → AI email design shows the saved style and lets you clear it. You can also save from the email’s Style settings or Campaign settings. After AI generates an email, a Save as AI style chip appears next to the follow-up suggestions above the composer, letting you capture the generated preview, including changes awaiting acceptance. The chip stays hidden while the email already matches your saved style. The confirmation uses the canvas you are reviewing, including your unsaved design changes. Before saving, the dialog shows what gets reused (fonts, colors, buttons and section order) and asks about the layout habits it noticed, such as opening with a video or placing a dotted divider above and below every button. Keep the habits you want and add notes for anything the detector cannot see, for example “always open with a short video”. Confirm to save the fonts, colors, spacing, buttons, block treatments, kept habits and notes as your company’s default for new AI emails. You can save one style at a time. Saving another email’s style replaces the previous default after confirmation. Clear in the saved-style status removes that default. Existing emails stay as they are, and editing or deleting the source email does not change the saved style. New AI emails reuse the captured theme and matching block styles while writing fresh content, follow your kept habits and notes, and get the captured dividers or spacers inserted around matching blocks automatically. Habits that need content, such as an opening video, guide the writer but cannot invent a video for you. Where the saved email shows a choice, it wins over your design direction: badges above titles or none, title alignment, button shape, opening with a hero or a title, and closing on a call-to-action band or a button. Every email of a new sequence opens the way the saved email does. Explicit style instructions and plain-text choices take precedence. To preserve the exact arrangement of sections, start from an email template instead. Imported HTML provides its supported inline colors and typography; stylesheet rules and complex HTML layouts are not reproduced exactly. You can also get, save and clear styles through the public API, sequenzy email-ai-style get|save|clear, and MCP get_email_ai_style, save_email_ai_style, clear_email_ai_style. Read the current revision before replacing or clearing it. Public clients capture the stored source email by default; an optional canvas snapshot supports unsaved designs, just like the editor. They keep every detected layout habit unless layoutRuleIds (CLI --layout-rules or --without-layout-rules) narrows them, and accept the same notes (CLI --notes). Generation through the dashboard, API, CLI, and MCP uses your company’s saved default unless you request a different visual direction. For example, “welcome email from ChatGPT” or “try an OpenAI email” takes precedence over a saved Anthropic-inspired style. A new content request alone, or a mention such as “announce our ChatGPT integration,” keeps your default.

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Design prompt

A theme controls values - fonts, colors, spacing, radius. The design prompt controls composition: how Sequenzy AI decides what an email is made of. Write it in Settings → Email Design → Design direction. Describe how your designed emails should look: layout and density, which sections belong in an email, how prominent the call to action is, imagery, and any reference brands.
The design prompt sits between your own instructions and Sequenzy’s defaults:
  1. What you ask for in a specific request wins
  2. Then the design prompt
  3. Then Sequenzy’s default composition rules
It cannot break block schemas, image rules, or compliance requirements. Tone & Voice steers the writing; the design prompt steers the design - keep them separate. Editing the design prompt also changes which layouts a sequence picks, so update it when generated emails do not look the way you want and regenerate. You can also set it with sequenzy companies update <id> --email-design-prompt-file ./design.md, the emailDesignPrompt field on the companies API, or the update_company MCP tool. You do not have to write it yourself. When you connect a website, Sequenzy writes it from a screenshot of your landing page. If the field is still empty, the first email generation fills it in with the direction Sequenzy AI derived from your brand - kicker style, title alignment, button shape, dividers, spacing, and how emails open - as plain, editable text. Every generation after that follows the stored text, so all your emails share one visual identity. Edit it to change how your emails look, or clear it and the next generation writes a fresh one.

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Where to edit it

  • Settings → Email Design: Set the default theme for new and existing emails
  • Email Editor: Customize one email and reset it back to the company theme at any time
  • API, CLI, and MCP: update_company (companies update) sets the workspace default, and a per-email override is available on sequence email steps

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Overriding one sequence email

To restyle a single sequence email without moving the workspace default, send an emailTheme patch on that step. It is a partial patch: omitted fields keep the step’s current override, or the company theme when the step has none. Send null to drop the override so the step inherits the company theme again.
The same field is accepted by the update_sequence, update_sequence_node, and update_sequence_nodes MCP tools and by PUT /api/v1/sequences/{id}. sequenzy sequences get and get_sequence report the stored override per step, and null there means the step renders with the company theme. Within colors, background paints the outer canvas, content paints the inner content card, and surface paints nested cards or tinted tiles. When no content color has been stored, the card initially follows the canvas. A background-only patch preserves the card’s current effective color; set background and content to the same value when you want them matched, or to different values for a framed-email layout.
  1. Set your default company theme first
  2. Choose your header and footer
  3. Override the theme only for emails that need a special treatment, like launches or announcements

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Adjusting container padding

If your email feels too narrow on mobile, lower Horizontal padding in the Spacing section. You can also tune Vertical padding to control the space above and below the email container.
  • This changes the left and right gutter around the full email container
  • Vertical padding controls the top and bottom breathing room around the container
  • The same value is used in the editor preview and in the sent email HTML
  • Both sliders can go down to 0px
  • Use them together with Content width when you want more room on phones without redesigning the whole email

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Placing content on the left

Emails are centered by default. To place the content on the left instead, set Email alignment to Left. You find it near the top of the Style panel in the editor, and in Settings under email design for your company default.
  • In wide email clients such as desktop Gmail or Outlook, the content sits on the left with empty space to its right
  • Buttons, the logo, the footer and the automatic unsubscribe footer line up on the left too, so the email reads like a personal letter, even if they were centered before. A block set to right stays on the right
  • To keep one button, logo or footer centered, select it and pick Center under its alignment. Through the API, CLI and MCP, that is styles.keepAlign: true with textAlign: "center" on the block (align: "center" for a logo)
  • Emails built from pasted HTML keep the layout of their HTML. The footer Sequenzy adds below them lines up on the left at the content width. Email alignment sits in the sidebar of these emails
  • Phones show the content full width either way
  • Like every theme setting, you can set it as the company default or for a single email
  • Through the API, CLI and MCP, set layout.contentAlign to left in the email theme, or center to go back

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Notes

  • Theme values affect previews and sent emails, not just the editor canvas
  • Footer copy and footer structure still depend on your footer settings and selected layout style
When you request a different visual direction, the AI can replace conflicting colors, typography, layout, and block styling while updating your copy. A wording change alone does not count as a restyle. If the AI cannot produce a visual change, your email stays unchanged.