Set up company templates and variables

Note

Working with Gong Engage requires an Engage seat.

Who's this for? Managers & Admins

Where to go? Sidebar > Engage > Templates

Templates

Setting up templates saves your sales reps time when writing to or calling contacts, and enables them to send professional, information-rich messages easily and quickly.

Templates also:

• Ensure brand consistency: When your team uses company templates, messaging is consistent and supports your brand.

• Simplify personalization: Writing personal messages is really important, and templates with variables simplify this by automatically adding recipient names, meeting titles, call recording links, and more.

• Speed up employee onboarding: New employees who use templates can ramp up quickly and follow best practices, right from the start.

When it comes to creating high quality content for your organization, we recommend setting up a content committee that’s responsible for developing, deploying, and maintaining your team’s templates. Check out our Content Committee Guide for more guidance on how to set one up. You can also download our flow publishing checklist to help you stay on top of best practices for optimizing your templates.

Note
Currently, opportunity variables cannot be used when building flows or templates. Opportunity variables can only be used when writing a one-off email to a contact from Pipeline.

Types of templates

• YOUR TEMPLATES: These are the templates created by individual users. If a user duplicates any company templates and saves them with changes, they’ll be here too. You can define which users can create and manage personal templates through the available permission settings in their permission profile.

• COMPANY TEMPLATES: These templates are available to everyone in your org. They can only be edited by people who are authorized to do so through their permission profile, but anyone can duplicate them and save them as their own templates.

There is no limit to the number of company and personal templates you can have within Gong Engage.

Create and edit templates

Note:

Only Gong technical admins and business admins (or people who can manage general business settings) can edit company templates. These templates are available to everyone in your org, so any changes made to them can affect everyone.

Go to Engage from the sidebar and open Templates. Click + New Template to create a new one, or choose a template you want to edit from the panel on the left. You can change the text, apply rich text formatting, add variables, add emojis, and more.

The template body size can be up to 3 MB. Body size does not include attachments, but it does include in-line images and GIFs. The total size of a template including attachments can be up to 20 MB.

You can also add in-line images to your email templates. Simply drag and drop an image or gif into the body of your email template.

Add attachments to a template

You can add attachments to templates by clicking on the paperclip icon. The total size of a template including attachments can be up to 20 MB.

When adding an attachment to a template that hasn't been saved yet, you'll be prompted to save the template first in order to add the attachment.

Share a personal template

Once you’ve created a personal template, you can share it with your teammates to be viewed in their template libraries and used for sales engagement. You can share a specific template with another team member or an entire team, or share a templates folder with another team member or an entire team.

To share a single template:

1. Click themenu next to the template you want to share

2. Select Share

3. Select the name of the team member or entire team you want to share with

To share a folder:

1. Click themenu next to the folder you want to share

2. Select Share

3. Select the name of the team member or entire team you want to share with

Only the owner of a folder can add content to a folder they share.

If you’ve shared a template that you no longer want to be shared, you can un-share it through the same process.

The ability to share templates, as well as the ability to duplicate personal templates into company templates, are managed through your team members’ permission profiles.

Admins can view all personal content of the users in their org, while managers can view all personal content of the users reporting directly to them. Admins and managers cannot edit other team members’ content.

See templates that were shared with you

To see templates that have been shared with you, go to Engage > Templates and open the Shared with you folder in your templates library. You cannot edit content that was shared with you but owned by someone else. To modify a template that was shared with you, duplicate it and save it to your templates. You can also archive and restore templates that were shared with you, depending on whether you want to see them in your library.

You can use templates that were shared with you when drafting an email or building a flow email step. Archived content is not available for use.

Connect templates to AI-recommended to-dos

Out of the box, Gong provides company templates that are connected to each AI-recommended to-do. To edit these templates for your company, go to Templates > Company Templates > Gong AI to-dos folder. You can also switch the connection to a different AI-recommended to-do.

Team members can edit these on a one-off basis in the email composer when actioning an AI-recommended to-do.

Variables

Variables make it easy to personalize the messages you send and call scripts you use. Key info like the recipient’s names, meeting titles, and call recording links are included automatically.

Note that variables, which populate automatically based on the recipient or account information, are different from placeholders. A placeholder can be any text between curly brackets, intended for the person using the template to replace it with the relevant information before it goes out. We'll let you know before the email gets sent if there are any missing variables or placeholders still left in the email.

Currently, opportunity variables cannot be used when building flows or templates. Opportunity variables can only be used when writing a one-off email to a contact from Pipeline.

Built-in variables from Gong

The built-in variables Gong provides that are included automatically, are listed in the table below. 

Note

Currently, opportunity variables cannot be used when building flows or templates. Opportunity variables can only be used when writing a one-off email to a contact from Pipeline.

Create variables

In addition to these built-in variables, you can also create variables from CRM fields that are imported to Gong to suit your organization’s needs. These variables will then be available for use when creating email templates and flow emails.

Only technical admins can create custom variables.

To create variables from CRM fields:

1. Go to Company Settings > CRM > Salesforce/HubSpot

2. In the Import from Salesforce/HubSpot area, click Manage Fields

3. Select Create variable next to the relevant field.

Note that Lookup fields are not currently supported as variables.

Add variables to email templates

Currently, opportunity variables cannot be used when building flows or templates. Opportunity variables can only be used when writing a one-off email to a contact from Pipeline.

• Add variables to the subject: Click the subject field and the Add Variable button will appear. Click the button and the variable menu will be displayed.

• Add variables to the message body: Click the Add Variable button in the toolbar along the bottom and the variable menu will be displayed.

Tip:

Variables in Gong are grouped the same way they're grouped in your CRM. To avoid errors, use templates with variables that align with the entity you're reaching out to. For example, if you're emailing a lead, make sure you're using the "Lead First Name" variable instead of the "Contact First Name" variable.

Using conditional variables

Conditional variables say "if the specified condition is true, then use this language". Conditional variables can be found in the 'Conditionals' tab of the variable menu.

For instance, you can set up a conditional variable to say something like "if there is no company name, then say ___". With these variables, you can tell the email composer how to proceed if a statement is true or false. Once you've added a conditional variable statement, you can select variables for each part of the statement and add free text between blue tags. Let's look at an example below:

This statement says that if there's a company name available, then say "I'd love to hear about the culture at [recipient company name]". If not, then say "Where are you working these days?"

Use scheduling link variables

Add scheduling link variables to a template so that whenever a rep selects that template, their personal scheduling link will populate automatically.

Your reps can add their scheduling links under My Settings > Emails > View and update scheduling links.

Add scheduling link variables to your email template or flow email the same way you would add any other variable, under the Scheduling links category.