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Overview

Courier’s Brands feature enables you to create and maintain a consistent visual identity for your email and inbox notifications. Whether you’re sending notifications under your own brand or white-labeling them for your customers, Brands provides tooling and options for configuring logos, colors, headers, and footers. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create and customize your first brand in Courier.
Brand Designer UI

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What You’ll Build

We’ll create a brand that includes:
  • A custom logo
  • Your brand colors
  • A styled header and footer
  • Social media links

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What is a Brand?

A Brand in Courier is a reusable configuration object that defines the visual styling and templating rules to apply to an email or inbox notification. Each Brand contains a set of customizable attributes that determine how your emails and inbox messages appear to recipients, including visual elements, styling rules, and reusable code components.

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Understanding Email Brand Templates

Courier offers three types of email brand templates:
  • Perfect for most use cases
  • Easy to configure with a visual interface
  • Includes pre-built header and footer layouts
  • Offers more control over header and footer
  • Uses Handlebars templating language
  • Good for custom layouts while maintaining ease of use
  • Complete control over email layout
  • Requires MJML and/or Handlebars knowledge
  • Best for highly customized designs
We’ll focus on the Standard Template in this tutorial, as it’s the most straightforward way to get started with branding.

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Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Prepare your brand assets (logo, color codes, social media links) before starting this tutorial. Having these ready will make the process much smoother!
1

Access the Brand Designer

  1. Log into your Courier account
  2. Navigate to the Designer section
  3. Click on “Brands” in the top menu
  4. Click “New Brand”
2

Set Up Your Brand

  1. Enter a name for your brand (e.g., “My Company Brand”)
  2. (Optional) Add a brand_id if you plan to manage the brand via API
  3. Click “Create Brand”
3

Upload Your Logo

  1. In the Brand Designer, locate the Logo section
  2. Click “Upload Logo” or drag and drop your logo file
  3. Your logo should be:
    • JPEG, PNG, or GIF format
    • Maximum 5MB in size
    • Ideally 140px wide (height is flexible)
4

Define Your Brand Colors

  1. In the Brand Designer, locate the Brand Colors section
  2. Set your Primary Color - this will be used for buttons and important elements
  3. Set Secondary and Tertiary colors - these create accent elements
  4. Set your Header Color - this appears at the top of your emails
5

Configure Your Footer

  1. In the Brand Designer, locate the Footer section
  2. Add your company name and a copy right declaration using the current year variable © {datetime.year}
  3. You can also include other built-in variables like {urls.unsubscribe} and {urls.preferences}
  4. Add a social media link - for testing purposes you can use Courier’s Linkedin Page https://www.linkedin.com/company/trycourier/
6

Preview Your Brand

  1. Click the “Preview” button
  2. Review how your brand looks in a sample email
  3. Make any adjustments needed
7

Publish Your Brand

  • Click the “Publish” button
Your brand is now available for use in your notifications! 🙌
8

Configure notifications to use your brand

If you’ve set your brand as default, you can skip this step. Otherwise, to use this brand in specific notifications:
  1. Open the notification you want to brand
  2. Go to Template Settings
  3. Select your brand from the dropdown menu
9

Test Your Brand

Option 1: Test via Template
  1. Open any email template that uses your brand
  2. Click the “Send” tab at the top
  3. Fill in the test recipient details
  4. Send a test notification
Option 2: Use the Send API
  1. Use the Send API and include your brand_id in the request body:
POST /send
curl --request POST \
--url https://api.courier.com/send \
--header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
        "message": {
        "brand_id": "your-brand-id",
        "to": {
            "email": "recipient@example.com"
        },
        "content": {
            "title": "Testing My New Brand",
            "body": "This is a test message using my custom brand!"
        }
        }
    }'

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Advanced Options

While we used the Standard email template in this tutorial, remember that Courier also offers:
  • Custom MJML templates for advanced email layouts
  • Handlebars templates for dynamic content
  • Custom CSS styling
Ready to explore these options? Check out our advanced branding documentation.

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Next Steps

Now that you’ve created your first brand, try:
  • Creating multiple brands for different use cases
  • Testing your branded notifications
  • Exploring the Brands API for programmatic management of Courier Brands