Letterhead
A Letterhead in Salesforce is a reusable branding wrapper for HTML emails sent from the platform.
Definition
A Letterhead in Salesforce is a reusable branding wrapper for HTML emails sent from the platform. It holds the logo, the header and footer styling, the body and background colors, and standing footer content like a legal disclaimer. Any HTML email template that references the letterhead inherits all of that styling, so the template author writes only the message body. Admins build a letterhead once in Setup and point many templates at it.
There are two flavors. Classic Letterheads are the original Salesforce Classic feature, built under Setup and consumed by "HTML (using Letterhead)" templates. Enhanced Letterheads are the Lightning Experience successor, created from the App Launcher and attached to a Lightning email template that uses the Handlebars Merge Language. Classic Letterheads cannot be created in Lightning Experience, but ones built earlier still render there. New branding work in Lightning orgs usually starts with an Enhanced Letterhead instead.
How letterheads wrap and brand an email
The three regions of a Classic Letterhead
A Classic Letterhead splits an email into stacked regions that the admin styles independently. The top section, often called the header, holds the logo image and a colored masthead. A thin middle line sits below it as a divider you can color and resize. The body region is where the referencing template drops its message content, and you set its background color and text defaults here. The footer region carries standing content such as a mailing address, a legal disclaimer, and an unsubscribe link, again with its own color, height, and alignment. None of these regions contain the actual email copy. The template that points at the letterhead supplies that. This separation is the whole point: one team owns the frame, another writes the words. When the brand color or footer disclaimer changes, an admin edits the single letterhead and every template that references it picks up the new look on the next send. You build all of this in a point-and-click editor under Setup, so no HTML skills are strictly required, though a Source view is available for finer control.
Why the pattern exists
Picture an org with two hundred HTML email templates, each one pasting in the same logo URL, the same brand hex codes, and the same footer block. Change the logo and someone has to open all two hundred templates. The letterhead removes that duplication by centralizing the frame. A template references a letterhead by name and inherits its logo, colors, and footer in one move. That keeps customer-facing email visually consistent without forcing every template author to be a designer. The approach was a good fit when Salesforce Classic dominated and email branding was largely static. It trades some per-template flexibility for governance and consistency, which is usually the right trade for service and sales email where the brand must look the same on every message. The cost shows up when a single template needs a layout the shared letterhead does not allow. In Classic, the usual answer was a second letterhead, which slowly grew the library that admins later had to audit and prune.
Enhanced Letterheads in Lightning Experience
Enhanced Letterheads are the Lightning version of the same idea, with more control over the header and footer. You create one from the App Launcher by searching Enhanced Letterheads and clicking New, then give it a Name and an internal Description. Inside the editor you add content to the header, the footer, or both. Rich text, images, links, and merge fields are all supported, and a Source button lets you paste raw HTML for precise layout. Images can be uploaded and reused across letterheads. The key rule is the binding to templates: an Enhanced Letterhead only attaches to a Lightning email template that uses the Handlebars Merge Language. You edit the template, open the Enhanced Letterhead dropdown, and pick the letterhead you built. From then on that template renders inside the chosen header and footer. This model keeps the centralized-branding benefit of Classic while fitting the Lightning template builder, the Handlebars merge syntax, and modern image handling. For orgs standardizing on Lightning, this is where new letterhead work belongs.
Where Email Brand Settings fit
Letterheads are not the only way to centralize brand in Salesforce email. Lightning email templates can also carry their own embedded styling per template, and org-level controls let admins set default colors and a logo that templates reference. The practical effect is a spectrum. At one end, a single shared Enhanced Letterhead frames many templates, which is ideal when the header and footer should be identical across a department. At the other end, a template embeds everything itself, which suits a one-off campaign that needs a bespoke layout. Most mature orgs use a mix: a small number of letterheads for the common service and sales emails, plus a handful of self-contained templates for special cases. Choosing well is mostly about who maintains what. If a marketing or admin team must guarantee a consistent frame, a letterhead enforces it in one place. If individual template authors need freedom, embedded styling gives it to them. Understanding both options prevents the common mistake of forcing every email into one rigid wrapper.
Logos, hosting, and image gotchas
The logo is the part of a letterhead that most often breaks in a recipient inbox. A Classic Letterhead points at an image by URL, and that URL has to be reachable by the outside world. If the logo sits behind a login or on an internal server, the customer sees a broken image placeholder instead of the brand. The fix is to host the logo on a permanent, publicly accessible location, such as a Salesforce static resource or a Documents folder marked externally available, and confirm the link resolves in a private browser session. Size matters too. An oversized logo inflates the email and can render awkwardly on mobile, so trim the image to its display dimensions before uploading. Enhanced Letterheads improve this by letting you upload and manage images inside Salesforce, which reduces dead links, but you should still send a test to an external address. Email clients also vary in how they treat images and styles, so a letterhead that looks perfect in one client can shift in another. A real outbound test, not just the preview, is the only reliable check.
Migrating and maintaining a letterhead library
Orgs moving from Classic to Lightning usually treat the email-template refresh as a chance to clean house. Existing Classic Letterheads keep working when viewed in Lightning, so nothing breaks on day one. New work, though, tends to shift to Enhanced Letterheads and Lightning templates because Classic Letterheads cannot be created in Lightning Experience. A sensible migration starts by listing every Classic Letterhead and the templates that reference each one. Letterheads with no live templates can be retired. Active ones get rebuilt as Enhanced Letterheads, and their templates are recreated as Lightning email templates bound to the new letterhead. Treat any change to a shared letterhead as a high-blast-radius edit. Because every referencing template inherits the change, a wrong color or a broken footer link is visible in production the moment you save. Make and preview the change in a sandbox first, send a test, then promote. Keep the library small. A short, well-named set of letterheads is far easier to govern than dozens of near-duplicates accumulated over years.
Create a Classic Letterhead
These steps create a Classic Letterhead in Salesforce Classic, then make it available to HTML email templates. You need the Manage Letterheads permission, and you should host any logo image on a publicly reachable URL before you begin.
- Open the Classic Letterheads setup page
From Setup, type Classic Letterheads into the Quick Find box and select Classic Letterheads. Click New Letterhead to start a fresh one.
- Set the identifying properties
Select Available For Use so other users can pick it, then enter a Letterhead Label and a Letterhead Unique Name. These are internal only and help admins identify the letterhead later.
- Add the logo and style the header
Save, then in the letterhead detail click into the header region. Insert your logo by URL, and set the top line and middle line colors and heights to match your brand.
- Style the body and footer
Set the body background color and default text. Edit the footer with your address, disclaimer, and unsubscribe link, choosing its color, height, and alignment.
- Reference it from an email template
Go to Setup, Classic Email Templates, New Template, and choose HTML (using Letterhead). Select this letterhead, and write only the message body. The template inherits the rest.
Checkbox that exposes the letterhead to users so it can be chosen when creating an HTML email template.
The human-readable name shown in setup lists. Internal only; recipients never see it.
The API-style unique identifier auto-suggested from the label and used to reference the letterhead programmatically.
- Classic Letterheads cannot be created in Lightning Experience. For new Lightning work, build an Enhanced Letterhead from the App Launcher instead.
- A logo hosted behind a login or on an internal URL shows as a broken image in customer inboxes. Use a publicly accessible location and test from outside.
- Editing a shared letterhead changes every template that references it, and the change is live in production the moment you save. Preview in a sandbox and send a test first.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Letterhead in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Letterhead.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Letterhead.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What does a Salesforce Classic Letterhead define for the HTML email templates that reference it?
Q2. What is the main maintenance advantage of using a Letterhead across many HTML email templates?
Q3. What is the modern Lightning-era replacement for the legacy Letterhead approach to branded email?
Discussion
Loading discussion…