The Latex Suite plugin allows you to make macros that can work in text mode, since I needed macros for accented characters, I thought I would share as I was having difficulty finding a solution for a high frequency use case of accented characters.
{ trigger: "e'", replacement: "é", options: "tA"},
{ trigger: "e`", replacement: "è", options: "tA"},
{ trigger: "o`", replacement: "ò", options: "tA"},
{ trigger: "u`", replacement: "ù" , options: "tA"},
{ trigger: "a`", replacement: "à" , options: "tA"},
{ trigger: "i`", replacement: "ì", options: "tA"},
If you want to use these yourself you can copy them and paste at the end (before the closing bracket ) of the snippets section in the options for Latex Suite.
There are only the accented characters that are used in Italian but if you would like to add more, you can copy on of these add the sequence of characters you want to use as a trigger and put in the replacement character in the replacement section.
Hope this helps.