How to use Canva with Broadcast emails

Newsletters are a fantastic way to maintain relationships with your customers and clients, keeping them updated and engaged with your brand. If you're looking to enhance your newsletters, embedding a Canva newsletter directly into your email can be a powerful strategy.

Embedding a Canva design directly into your email can enhance your newsletters and keep your customers updated on your brand's latest news. In this article, we'll explore how to combine Canva and CollegePlannerPro's Broadcast tool to streamline your newsletter creation process. 

Step 1: Create and design your newsletter 
To find a good template for your newsletter, open up the Canva home page and type "Newsletter" in the search bar. Press Enter, and you will be presented with over 3,000 newsletter templates to choose from.

Creating a clickable link is simple. First, select the text or element, and right-click to view additional options, one being the ability to insert a link. You may proceed with inserting several links throughout your newsletter.

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Step 2: Go to Share > Download > PNG
Once the design of your newsletter is complete, you will need to download it in two different formats to embed it in an email. The first is a PNG file. To start, click on the Share button at the top right corner of the screen. In the menu that drops down, click Download. Under File Type, choose PNG. Leave all the other settings blank, then click Download. This will save the file on your hard drive, most likely your Downloads folder.  

Note: If you want to, you can save your design as a JPG, but the quality of the image won’t be as impressive. However, if space is a concern, you can go with JPG.

Step 3: Go to Share > Download > PDF Standard
Next, you will need to download a PDF version of your design as well, so that the links inside your design will remain clickable. To start, click the Share button once again. Under File Type, choose PDF Standard.

Once you have selected your file type, leave the rest of the settings blank, then click Download. Your PDF will be downloaded to your hard drive, just like the image file type in step 2. 

Step 4: Upload your PDF to your cloud storage system
Now that you have your PDF version downloaded, it’s time to upload it to the cloud storage system of your choice. The goal is to create a file you can link to when you embed your newsletter image into an email. Google Drive is the most popular choice. To do this, click the New button, then select New Folder.

Name your new folder, then click Create. Now that you have a newsletter folder, you just need to add your PDF file. The easiest way to do this is to drag your PDF file from a separate window into the folder.

Step 5: Right-click and select "Get Link"
The goal is to link the email with your embedded newsletter to the file you just added. To do this, you will need the link to this file. To get the link for the PDF file that you just uploaded to your cloud storage system, right-click the file, select "Share", then "Share" again.

An options menu will pop up. In the General Access drop-down menu, choose "Anyone With The Link". This option guarantees that anyone who uses this link can open the file. You will also want to ensure anyone who you are sharing the link is set as "Viewer" only. When you’re ready, click Copy Link, then click Done. The link to the PDF file has now been copied to your clipboard.

Step 6: Insert photo in Broadcast Message and select the downloaded PNG
Once your Broadcast email editor opens up, you can add the title of the email and write an intro if you’d like to. When ready, click on the Insert Image button. You will be prompted to choose a file from your computer. Click the "Drop image" placeholder to select a file, or simply drag and drop the file into this box.

Step 7: Click the Insert Link icon and paste the link to the PDF
Click on the image, then click the Insert Image button that shows up on a sub-menu. After pasting the link, select for the link to open in a new tab.

If you want to test that the link is working and redirecting appropriately, click once on the image, and from the sub-menu, select the "Open Link" icon.

Your image is now “clickable.” Meaning when your reader clicks on the PNG in the email, they will be directed to the PDF of the Newsletter. Once that PDF is open, they can click on any elements linked to your websites and be directed to them.