How to Create a Branded Email Experience in Salesforce

Once Salesforce can successfully deliver authenticated emails, the next step is ensuring those emails are professional, consistent, and aligned with your organization's brand. Salesforce provides several tools to support email branding, including Enhanced Letterheads, Email Templates, Flow-generated email formatting, and HTML Signatures. The challenge is that not every branding option is available in every email experience. A user composing an email from a Salesforce record has access to different tools than a Flow sending an automated notification.

This guide walks through the most common email branding options available in Salesforce and how to create a consistent experience across both user-generated and automated communications. We'll cover:

• Enhanced Letterheads and Email Templates, and how they work together
• Adding a branded header image to Flow-generated emails
• Creating and maintaining HTML email signatures
• What happens when a Letterhead and a Signature are both in play
• A recommended configuration order and quick-reference summary

💡 This is the second of two guides. If outbound email isn’t reliably reaching inboxes yet, start with the companion guide, Setting Up Email Deliverability in Salesforce, which covers Deliverability settings, SPF, and DKIM.

Think of these as the foundation of your Salesforce email strategy. If any one of them is missing or misconfigured, users may experience failed delivery, spam filtering, or authentication warnings.

This guide walks through how each component works, how to configure it, and how to coordinate with your IT team to ensure Salesforce emails are delivered successfully.

Part 1: Understanding Salesforce Email Branding

Salesforce provides several components that work together to create a branded email experience.

Branding Components

Before configuring email branding, it's important to understand the different components available and how they work together. Understanding these components helps determine the right solution for each use case.

User-Composed vs. Flow-Generated Emails

Not all email branding options are available everywhere in Salesforce.

Flow Email Actions do not support Enhanced Letterheads, which is why Flow-generated emails require a different branding approach. We'll cover that workaround in Part 2. 

Enhanced Letterheads vs. Email Templates

These two features are frequently confused because they're often used together. A simple rule:

• Letterhead = Branding
• Template = Content  

Most organizations use both together. The Letterhead provides the visual design, while the Template provides the message content and dynamic merge fields. Together with HTML Signatures, these components create a consistent and professional email experience across Salesforce communications.

Part 2: Branding Flow-Generated Emails

The biggest limitation of Enhanced Letterheads is that they aren't supported by Flow Email Actions. If your organization sends automated emails through Flow, you'll need a different approach to maintain branding. A common solution is to host a branded image in Salesforce and reference it directly within the email's HTML.

Step 1: Upload the Header Image (via Classic)

1. Switch to Salesforce Classic
2. Upload the image as a Document
3. Enable Externally Available Image
4. Save the Document

⚠️ If “Externally Available Image” isn’t enabled, recipients outside your Salesforce org won’t be able to view the image.

Step 2: Copy the Image URL

1. Open the uploaded image
2. Right-click the image
3. Select Copy Image Address (or the equivalent in your browser)
4. Save the URL for use in Flow

Step 3: Create a Text Variable in Flow

Create a Text Variable in Flow Builder:

Setting	Value
Resource Type	Variable
API Name	varEmailHeaderImageUrl
Data Type	Text
Default Value	The image address URL copied in Step 2

 

Step 4: Embed the Variable in the Email Body

Within the Send Email action, add an image tag at the top of the email body:

<img src="{!varEmailHeaderImageUrl}" alt="Company Header" style="display:block; max-width:100%; height:auto; border:0;">

Step 5: Enable Rich Text Formatting

On the Send Email action, ensure:

Rich Text Formatted Body = True

⚠️ The Send Email action’s “Rich Text Formatted Body” setting must be set to true. If it’s left false, the HTML above will be sent as literal text—recipients will see the raw tags instead of a rendered image.

Quick Validation Checklist

Step	Action
1	Switch to Classic; upload image with Externally Available Image = true; Save
2	Right-click the image → Copy Image Address; save the URL
3	In Flow, create text variable varEmailHeaderImageUrl with that URL as the default value
4	Reference {!varEmailHeaderImageUrl} inside an <img> tag at the top of the email body
5	Set Rich Text Formatted Body = true on the Send Email action

At this point, branding is covered at the organization level through Letterheads, Templates, and Flow email headers. The final branding layer is the individual sender’s signature.

 

Part 3: Setting Up Your HTML Email Signature

HTML email signatures let users maintain consistent contact information across outbound emails while still supporting company branding.

Preparing the Company Logo

Before users configure their signatures, the company logo needs to be hosted in Salesforce and accessible externally. A common approach is to store the logo as a Salesforce Static Resource.

1. Navigate to Setup → Static Resources
2. Click New
3. Upload the company logo image
4. Provide a meaningful name (for example, CompanyLogo)
5. Save the Static Resource
6. Obtain the public URL that will be referenced in the signature template

💡 Use a small, web-optimized image. Large images increase email size and may not render consistently across email clients.

Updating Your Signature

Navigate to: Settings → Email → My Email Settings

Paste the HTML signature template below and replace the placeholder values with your information: 

<table>
<tr>
<td style="padding-right:15px;">
<img src="{{Company Logo URL}}" width="100">
</td>
<td>
<div><strong>{{Your Name}}</strong></div>
<div>{{Your Title}}</div>
<div>O: {{Your Phone}}</div>
<div>E: {{Your Email}}</div>
<div><a href="{{Your LinkedIn Profile URL}}">Connect on LinkedIn</a></div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Required Replacements

Placeholder	Replace With
{{Company Logo URL}}	Public URL of the company logo
{{Your Name}}	Employee name
{{Your Title}}	Job title
{{Your Phone}}	Phone number
{{Your Email}}	Email address
{{Your LinkedIn Profile URL}}	LinkedIn profile URL (optional)

Users can remove any optional lines they don’t want to display.

Testing Your Signature & Letterhead Together

After saving your signature:

1. Open a record
2. Click Send Email
3. Insert an Enhanced Letterhead
4. Verify the signature appears automatically
5. Send a test email to yourself
6. Confirm the logo, formatting, and hyperlinks render correctly

When configured together:

• The Letterhead provides company branding
• The Template provides content
• The Signature provides sender information

For most organizations, the configuration described above is sufficient. In our implementation, additional automation is used to standardize signature formatting and store the resulting HTML for use across Salesforce.

 

Part 4: Signature Automation

The signature solution described in Part 3 includes automation that converts user-maintained signature content into reusable HTML. This allows users to manage signatures through standard Salesforce settings while maintaining consistent formatting across the organization.

Rather than storing user-entered HTML directly in outbound emails, a Flow and Apex action work together to convert and store the signature in a format that can be reused consistently across the organization.

Supporting Components

Custom User Field

A custom field on the User object stores the converted HTML signature.

Field Label	API Name	Data Type
HTML Signature	HTML_Signature__c	Rich Text Area (32,768)

 

Apex Invocable Action

The automation leverages a custom Apex Invocable Action.

Component	Purpose
ConvertEmailSignatureToRichTextInvocable	Converts user-maintained signature content into rich HTML for email consumption

 

How it Works

When a user updates their signature:

1. The User record is updated
2. A record-triggered Flow detects that the Signature field has changed
3. The Flow calls the ConvertEmailSignatureToRichTextInvocable Apex action
4. The Apex action converts the signature into rich HTML
5. The resulting HTML is stored in HTML_Signature__c
6. Email functionality references the HTML Signature field when generating outbound communications

This architecture allows users to manage signatures through standard Salesforce settings while ensuring consistent formatting across the organization. With Letterheads, Templates, Flow branding, and Signature Automation in place, Salesforce can provide a consistent and professional email experience across both user-generated and automated communications.

Before wrapping up, here's a quick reference guide for the most common branding-related configurations discussed throughout this article.

 

Quick Reference Summary

Use the table below when configuring or troubleshooting email branding.

Recommended Configuration Order

For a new Salesforce implementation, consider configuring email features in this order:

1. Configure Email Deliverability
2. Configure SPF
3. Configure DKIM
4. Validate email authentication
5. Create Enhanced Letterheads
6. Create Email Templates
7. Configure Flow email branding
8. Configure HTML Signatures
9. Test across Outlook, Gmail, and mobile devices

Following this sequence helps surface issues early and avoids troubleshooting multiple variables at once. 

The first four steps are covered in the companion guide, Setting Up Email Deliverability in Salesforce, which focuses on email authentication and deliverability. This guide covers the remaining steps required to create a professional and consistent email experience for your users and customers.

Final Thoughts

Strong email branding isn't just about aesthetics.

A well-designed email framework improves consistency, reduces maintenance, and helps ensure every email sent from Salesforce reflects your organization's standards. The key is understanding which tools apply to which email experiences:

• Enhanced Letterheads provide branding for user-generated emails
• Email Templates provide reusable content and merge fields
• Salesforce-hosted images provide branding for Flow-generated emails
• HTML Signatures personalize communications for individual users
• Automation helps maintain consistency behind the scenes

Taken together, these components create a scalable and maintainable email experience that works across both user-generated and automated communications. Even though this guide focuses on branding, many email issues originate in the authentication layer. When troubleshooting, start with the fundamentals and work outward:

Deliverability → Authentication → Branding

Whether an email is sent by a user, a template, or a Flow, your recipients should receive a consistent and professional experience every time.

The goal isn't simply to send emails—it's to ensure every email reinforces your organization's brand and delivers a polished experience to the recipient.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Why can't I use an Enhanced Letterhead in a Salesforce Flow email?

Flow Email Actions don't support Enhanced Letterheads. To brand Flow-generated emails, you need to host an image in Salesforce (as a Document with "Externally Available Image" enabled), reference its URL in a Flow text variable, and embed that variable in an <img> tag with Rich Text Formatted Body set to true.

What's the difference between an Enhanced Letterhead and an Email Template in Salesforce?

An Enhanced Letterhead controls the visual design and branding of an email, while an Email Template controls the message content and merge fields. Most organizations use both together (Letterhead for branding, Template for content) alongside an HTML Signature for sender details.

How do you add a branded header image to a Salesforce Flow email?

Upload the image as a Document in Salesforce Classic with "Externally Available Image" enabled, copy its image address URL, store that URL in a Flow text variable, and reference the variable inside an <img> tag at the top of the email body—making sure Rich Text Formatted Body is set to true on the Send Email action.