We recently launched a new email template language that makes it easy to code emails that tie into the MailChimp email design tools. If you are designing emails for your clients, this is pretty huge, as you can create designs that ham-fisted, non-designers can tweak through the design inspector, without having to touch your code. We’ve just made it even easier for designers and coders to rock the email template casbah.

MailChimp Template Language Dreamweaver Extension

To make coding your email templates even easier, we’ve created a Dreamweaver extension and TextMate bundle with tons of template language snippets and shortcuts. The Dreamweaver extension adds a series of commands to the Commands menu from editable CSS blocks, to Twitter share links and everything in between. The Sample Layout command builds a complete email template that you can modify to serve your purpose.

MailChimp Template Bundle for TextMate

For Mac users, the TextMate bundle also speeds up template development. It has all of the same code snippets as the Dreamweaver extension, but TextMate makes it even faster to access with shortcut commands like “mccss” followed by a tab key press and an editable CSS property appears:

/*@editable*/ background-color: #ccc;

Download these free plugins and some pre-built sample templates from the MailChimp resources section of this site, where you’ll also find documentation on the template language.