If you design your emails in Canva, you can import a design directly into a Marketing campaign instead of recreating it in the drag-and-drop editor. Marketing preserves the Canva layout as-is and uploads all your images to your account.
Exporting from Canva
Finish your design in Canva.
Click Share → Download.
Under File type, choose HTML. Not PDF, not PNG — it must be HTML.
Click Download. Canva exports a `.zip` containing an `index.html` file and an `images/` folder.
Importing into a Campaign
Go to Campaigns → Create Campaign.
On the first step, click the Import from Canva tab.
Drag your `.zip` file onto the upload area, or click to browse.
Marketing extracts the HTML, uploads the images to your image library, and creates the campaign with the Canva design as its body.
Continue through Setup, Recipients, Review & Send as normal.
Preserving Merge Tags
You can personalize Canva designs by typing merge tags directly into your Canva text frames before exporting. Marketing substitutes them at send time exactly like designs from the in-app editor.
Available merge tags:
`{{first_name}}` — recipient's first name
`{{last_name}}` — recipient's last name
`{{full_name}}` — first + last
`{{email}}` — recipient's email address
`{{company_name}}` — your agency name (from Settings)
`{{mailing_address}}` — your agency mailing address
`{{unsubscribe_url}}` — personalized unsubscribe link (required in every send)
Tips for Clean Canva Designs
Keep it under 800px wide — most email clients render at ~600-650px. Anything wider may scale awkwardly on mobile.
Use real text frames, not text-as-image — Canva sometimes rasterizes complex text into images, which kills accessibility and merge-tag substitution.
Avoid Canva animations and videos — they don't survive the HTML export; only the first frame ships.
Test the HTML export in your browser before importing — drag the unzipped `index.html` onto a Chrome tab. If it looks right there, it will render the same way in most inboxes.