How to lock-out Klaviyo's design flexibility?

So after a lot of research, it doesn’t appear you can restrict design choices or apply design restrictions to existing templates.

It appears the only way forward, is to start again with a brand new template but staff will still be able to do whatever they want which over time, will create the same inconsistencies we have now.

Our main concern are the endless empty span tags that are somehow created (see attached) we still haven’t worked this out. I suspect that when you hit return, the RTE repeats all of the tags maybe? Not sure how we end-up with so many empty ones though?

The attached images are from one text block, not even the full email.

Hi there @Ben, 

Thank you for sharing this with our Community! 

To clarify, you’re looking to see if there’s a way to choose a pre-set styling for templates ie. automatic font and bock spacing for tempalte so you don’t have to create the same stying actions over and over when using universal blocks and cloning templates as this seems to add those empty span tags, correct? What specific action do you take that seems to result in those empty tags? 

I want to ensure I’m understanding your query perfectly before I investigate further, thank you!

-Taylor 

Thanks for the reply @Taylor Tarpley, much appreciated.

And sorry if we’re missing something basic here or have a mental block about this as it applies to Klaviyo.

To clarify, you’re looking to see if there’s a way to choose a pre-set styling for templates 

Design lock-down

There’s obviously a lot of flexibility in all of the blocks so we’re trying to understand how to get basics like fonts and spacing more consistent. And then apply those defaults to emails moving forward.

As one example, can you remove all the fonts and limit the list to the 1 or 2 chosen fonts? Currently we see ‘Your fonts’ but the endless list of other options remain.

Or can we set default block spacing and apply to existing templates so that we don’t have to start again?

After re-reading the docs, it seems the only way forward is to draw a line in the sand and create a new template with all of the defaults set, and ensure nobody pastes styles when pasting from a previous campaign - is that right?

Applying a new template to flows

I’m confused at how to apply a new template to flows. It appears we’d have to completely re-make all of the flows - is that right?

Empty style spans

The empty span situation is really confusing. My experience with RTEs has been pretty bad but they’ve gotten a lot better over the years.

For example, the Campaign Monitor RTE never created endless empty spans with styles so we’re not 100% sure how they’re being created. I can see them when I switch to HTML but obviously the people writing the emails can’t see empty spans unless they do the same.

And a low content to code ratio hurts deliverability - right?

Moving forward, I’m experimenting with a new template to see if I can pin down issues and create a system that guarantees consistency but I was wondering how others achieve it and how they apply it to existing flows without re-making every single email in every flow.

I hope that makes more sense!

Cheers, Ben

@Taylor Tarpley All good! We’ve almost finished manually updating everything but still see random spans and tables with the rich text editor in Chrome (for Mac) for some reason.

Things are better if we paste text into a plain text file first, then copy from the plain text file into Klaviyo although not completely eliminated.

Cheers, Ben

Thanks for reaching out in the community, ​@Ben. I want to contribute with a solution.

The fonts are flexible, which is good for some people. Annoying for others. But there is a way to style your fonts so they are set for your templates.

When you edit a template, go to the left navigation and pick Styles.

Here you scroll down to Text and headings. Style the fonts you need with size, colour (H1, H2, body, etc.) with the style you have chosen. This way, your users can use the predefined fonts.
Hope this helps 😊