Pardot - Template Editor

Pardot provides a visual email template editor that allows marketers to edit content while developers maintain control over structure and behavior.

At Terra, we use Pardot’s Template Editor to:

• build reusable email templates
• define editable regions via HTML attributes
• test email rendering across clients and devices

This guide explains how the Template Editor works and the best practices we follow when creating email templates.

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Overview

The Pardot Template Editor is divided into several sections, but the most relevant ones for our workflow are:

• Building – where templates are created and edited
• Testing – where templates are rendered and validated across email clients

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Building view

The Building section is where most of the work happens. It provides three different editing modes:

• Editor: Visual editor for content editing

• HTML: Raw HTML view where developers paste and adjust the template code

• TEXT: Plain-text version of the email (used by some email clients)

Tip

At Terra, templates are usually developed in HTML first, and then configured so content editors can safely edit specific regions.

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Render testing

Pardot provices a way to test the email templates on a variety of clients and devices (it uses Litmus under the hood). To run a render test:

1. Open a template in the editor
2. Click the TESTING tab in the top navigation
3. Click New Render at the bottom of the page

Patience

It can take a while, sometimes just a minute, others more than 10 minutes. Just leave it running and check back later by reloading the page.

Each test result can be opened in a modal to inspect rendering details.

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Editable regions

To make email templates editable in Pardot, we use special HTML attributes that define which parts of the template can be modified by content editors.

pardot-region and pardot-region-type attributes

The pardot-region attribute is used to define the region of the email that will be replaced with the content of the campaign, we can give it any name we want. The pardot-region-type attribute is used to define the type of the region, it can be any of the following:

• pardot (wysiwyg editor)
• image (image selector)
• link (editable link)
• simple (basic text)
• html (raw HTML)
• text (plain text)

Caution

The pardot-region-type and pardot-region attributes might get removed by Pardot when saving content. To avoid this:

✅ Use them in content elements:

• Heading
• Text
• Img
• Button

❌ Do not use them on:

• Section
• Container
• Row
• Column

If none apply, use a standard div.

Examples:

<Heading pardot-region="main_article_title" pardot-region-type="text">Heading</Heading>
<Text pardot-region="main_article_text" pardot-region-type="text">Text</Text>
<Img pardot-region="main_article_image" pardot-region-type="image" src="#" alt="Main article image" />
<Text pardot-region="main_article_text" pardot-region-type="pardot">Text</Text>
<Button pardot-region="main_article_button" pardot-region-type="link">Button</Button>

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Repeatable regions

pardot-repeatable attribute

The pardot-repeatable attribute is used to define if the region is repeatable. This will show a small button-tooltip in the visual editor that allows for duplicating, removing, or moving up and down the region.

In the visual editor, this appears as a small tooltip control.

Examples:

<Section pardot-repeatable="section_main_article"></Section>

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Summary

• Templates are built in HTML and enhanced with Pardot attributes
• Editors can modify only the regions explicitly marked as editable
• Render testing is mandatory to ensure cross-client compatibility
• Attribute placement is critical to avoid Pardot stripping content