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Lesson
4

Setting Up Branding & Templates

6 mins to complete

As research teams scale, manual training and oversight for every project can become too time-consuming to manage on your own. With Research Hub, you can set up branding, templates, and other team-wide customizations to streamline research for everyone involved. 

In this lesson of our Hub for ReOps: Set Up and Onboarding course, we’ll show you:

  • What global customization options you have in Research Hub
  • How to customize branding and templates for your team

📹 Prefer watching to reading? This content is available as both an article and a video. Watch our Customer Success Specialist, Kaylynn, take you through the content in the video below or keep reading to dive in!

Your global customization options in Research Hub

As you’re setting up Research Hub for your team, you can customize your:

  • Company logo to add credibility all participant communications
  • Email themes to consistently style all emails sent to participants
  • Email templates to auto-populate email content based on study type and format
  • Email domain to send emails from a trusted account (e.g. research@yourcompany.org)
  • Sender profiles so all participants receive emails from recognizable email addresses
  • Confirmation page to show to participants after they apply 
  • Consent form to automatically collect informed consent from all participants

Note that while admins can create a default email theme, template, and sender profile to guide teams toward the best and safest options, these options are not “locked,” meaning researchers will still be able to select alternatives if they need to.

How to customize branding and templates for your team

To get started, visit your Team Settings page and head to the Branding, Templates, and Advanced options tabs.

To add a logo: 

  1. From the branding tab, click “upload your logo.” 
  2. Choose the logo from your downloaded images and click “save logo” to apply it to all of your participant-facing pages.
  3. That’s it! Your logo will appear on all participant-facing pages, including the invitation email, the application and screener survey pages, the Document Signing pages, the scheduling page, and more.

To create and set a default email theme:

  1. From the branding tab, click the “+ New theme” button, or else click on the ellipsis icon alongside an existing theme and select “Duplicate.”
  2. Give your new template a name, edit the HTML and CSS, and hit save. 
  3. Don’t forget to test your new theme—click on the ellipsis icon alongside your new theme and select “Send test.”

💡 If you're not super familiar with HTML and CSS, we've created an Email Theme CSS/HTML Cheat Sheet for you. Check it out below.


Looking for inspiration? Below are some examples of email themes created by User Interviews customers.

To create an email template set:

  1. From the “Templates” tab on the “Team settings” page, click “New template set” and fill out the details, including the set name, the study type and location it’ll be used for, and whether or not you’d like to set it as a default. 
  2. Click “next,” and then you’ll be directed to a page where you can edit each email notification within that template set. 
  3. Don’t forget to send yourself tests of each email to check for typos by clicking “send me a test” next to the edit button. 

💡 Pro Tip: Enter the slash symbol (“/”) into the body of your email to see all supported variable types for the template. Try to make the emails your own, both in language and tone and also in removing any variables you may not want to use. 

To see a full list of all email variables that User Interviews supports, check out the spreadsheet below.

Here’s an example of what the full email set might include for 1-1 interviews:

To set up a custom domain:

  1. Access your domain's DNS settings: Log in to your domain provider (i.e. GoDaddy, Cloudflare, etc) to access the DNS settings for your domain.
  2. Add the provided DNS records: In your domain's DNS settings, add the records provided by User Interviews. This involves the TXT and CNAME records. Please note record “Type”, “Host name”, and “Required value” and enter this information in the respective fields in your DNS host.

Important: Depending on your domain provider, there may be specific guidelines for entering these records. For example, some providers require that both TXT and CNAME records for “Host name” exclude the domain name. We advise reviewing your domain provider’s support documentation as necessary.

Below is an example of how we authenticated our own “userinterviews.com” domain: 

Authentication modal within User Interviews

TXT record within DNS host

CNAME record within DNS host

If your domain hasn’t been successfully authenticated after 48 hours, we recommend double checking the configuration in your DNS host as well as their support documentation about guidelines for entering these records.

To create sender profiles:

  1. From the “Advanced Options” tab of your “Team Settings” page, scroll down to the sender profile section and click "Create a profile.”
  2. Type in the name you want to use, and select a verified email address.
  3. Your sender profile can now be applied to new and existing projects!


📃 Note: If you want to use custom sender profiles with your company domain, you must first ensure that your domain was authenticated successfully. 

To edit the confirmation page:

  1. From the “Templates” tab of your “Team Settings” page, scroll to the Application confirmation page section and click “edit.”
  2. Customize the page header and body copy, apply text formatting with a simple WYSIWYG editor.
  3. Click “preview” to view what the final page will look like to participants. Any updates you make to this page will be applied to all projects launched by your team.

To edit your data consent form:

  1. Navigate to the “Advanced options” tab of your “Team settings” page. 
  2. From here, you can type out (or paste in) your data consent notice, apply formatting for better readability, and preview your changes in real-time. You can also link out to your company’s privacy policy or other relevant information in the footer section. If you don't have a notice prepared, we’ve provided a simple statement for you to build upon: "I'd like to be notified of research studies that may be relevant to me based on the data I've provided."
  3. Hit Save! Once you've created a consent notice, it will appear in two places: the panel opt-in form, and the project application form. Once you have saved a notice, a toggle will appear allowing you to turn it on or off as needed.


Congratulations, you’ve set up branding and templates in Research Hub! Now, you can ensure that all participant-facing communications across your team are professional, consistent, and customized to your company.

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