Scale your outreach with flows

Sales rep, Sales manager

Gong Engage*

With flows, you can engage with people at scale using a predetermined series of actions. Use company flows or create your own, adding variables so that you reach out to people in context. Flows help you manage and time your interactions through emails, calls, LinkedIn, and custom tasks.

This article covers how reps can duplicate and use company flows, create and use personal flows, and add and remove people from flows. If you're an admin, you can learn about setting up automation rules for company flows.

At the company level, admins can control whether or not contacts and leads can be active in multiple flows at once. At the flow level, reps can mark a flow as exclusive, meaning a contact or a lead can only be in that one flow at any given time. Learn more about exclusive flows.

You can also learn about how Engage helps you comply with spam regulations and set up for successful email delivery.

Note that currently, opportunity variables cannot be used when building flows or templates.

Types of flows

• Your flows: These are the flows that you’ve created. If you duplicate any company flows and save them with changes, they’ll be here too. Whether or not you can create and manage personal flows is defined by the settings your admin has configured in your permission profile.

• Company flows: These flows 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 flows. Company flows are available to everyone in your org, so any changes made to them by admins can affect everyone.

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

• Starter flows: These flows are available to everyone in your org. They’re pre-built by Gong to help team members speed up onboarding and reach out to prospects faster.

To get a snapshot of flow performance, go to Engage and open Flows. From here, select a folder. On the right, you can see how many people were added to each flow over all time, and how many are currently active and/or paused.

Duplicate a company flow

When you duplicate a company flow and save it as your own personal flow, the rules that were set up for automatically adding people to that company flow don't carry over to the duplicated version.

To duplicate a company flow and save it as your own:

1. Go to Engage > Flows

2. Scroll to your Company flows folder

3. Hover over the flow you want to duplicate. Click and select Duplicate

4. Choose the folder where you want the duplicated flow to live

5. Open the duplicated flow to edit it.

Move a flow between folders

To change the folder where a flow is stored:

1. Go to Engage > Flows

2. Hover over the flow you want to move. Click and select Move

3. Choose the folder where you want the duplicated flow to live

To move a personal flow into a company folder or a company flow into a personal folder, use the Duplicate option instead.

Create a new flow from scratch

To create a new flow from scratch:

1. Go to Engage > Flows

2. At the top right, click +NEW FLOW

3. Starting from the top, click the pencil to give the flow a name

4. Start adding steps. These are the types of steps you can add to a flow:

   1. Manual email: To save time when writing emails, click Use a template to add a template to your flow step. You can also add variables to your email to make it more personalized. Learn more about using email templates and variables. Email signatures appear in flow emails just as they would for any other emails sent through Engage. Note that currently, opportunity variables cannot be used when building flows or email templates.

      You can also save time by generating your email draft with AI. Click Generate an email and select the type of email you want to use for that step. Gong will give you an AI-generated email draft that's personalized based on previous emails each time someone reaches that step in the flow.

      These are the types of AI-generated emails you can add to a flow. Stay tuned for more:

      • Nudge: This email gently reminds someone to get back to you. Each time someone reaches this step in the flow, Gong generates a personalized message using AI

      • Follow-up: Each time someone reaches this step in the flow, Gong generates a personalized message based on your previous emails

      With manual emails, Engage will remind you that it’s time to send an email, and then you’ll edit it as needed and send it when you’re ready.

      For email steps that are not the first email in the flow, you can choose whether to send the email as a new thread or as a reply to the previous email step.

      When creating an email step, you can set up the "To", "CC", and "BCC" fields in advance. This way, when a rep gets a to-do prompting them to finalize and send the email, those fields are pre-filled for them. To do this, select the dropdown next to Recipients. You can select the variable "My manager" to have the rep's manager automatically added.

      Delay from flow start/delay from previous step: Manual email steps are only due on business days. For a manual email that's the first step in a flow, selecting "4 business days" as the delay from flow start means the step is due 4 business days after the person is added to the flow. For a manual email that's not the first step in a flow, selecting "4 business days" as the delay from previous step means the step is due 4 business days after the previous step.

   2. Auto email: With auto email steps, Engage sends the email automatically. Auto emails won’t appear on your list of to-dos unless there are values missing for variables, the contact has no email address, the email thread was lost, or your email account was disconnected, in which case the step will become a regular email step that appears on your list of to-dos for you to send manually. Email signatures appear in flow emails just as they would for any other emails sent through Engage.

      Delay from flow start/ delay from previous step

      For an auto email that's the first step in a flow, you can choose "Send as soon as possible" or select a delay in business days. If it's not the first step in a flow, you can select a delay in business days.

      • Send as soon as possible: Available for first auto email steps only. By default, the auto email will be sent out as soon as possible from the moment someone is added to the flow on business days only. If someone is added to the flow on a weekend and the Send on any day including weekends option is not selected, the email will be sent at 9:00 AM recipient's local time on the next business day.

        If you want the email to be sent as soon as possible on any day including weekends, select Send on any day including weekends. When selected, we will try to send the email right away, no matter what day or time it is.

        The email can still be delayed due to the sending process itself which can take a few minutes, throttling to ensure your emails don't get marked as spam, and email sending limits defined by your company admin. Auto emails snoozed by a sending limit will be sent at 8:00 AM user local time.

      • Set the delay in business days: Available for auto emails at any step in the flow. The auto email will be sent out at the exact specified time and according to the delay in business days you select. If the recipient's local time is not available, we'll send the email based on the sender's local time.

        For example, for first steps, selecting "3 business days" as the delay from flow start means the step is due 3 business days after the person is added to the flow. If it's not the first step, "3 business days" means the step is due 3 business days after the previous step.

      Gong automatically spaces out your flow emails where necessary, so some emails are sent out a few minutes later.

      For manual or automatic email steps that are not the first email in the flow, you can choose whether to send the email as a new thread or as a reply to the previous email step.

      The sender of an auto email is whoever added the contact or lead to the flow. If a flow has a rule set up that adds people to the flow automatically, the sender/to-do assignee will be defined by the rule.

      If a contact or lead has multiple email addresses, Gong sends the flow step to the email listed first.

      Like with regular email steps, you can set up the "To", "CC", and "BCC" fields in advance for auto emails. To do this, select the dropdown next to Recipients. You can select the variable "My manager" to have the rep's manager automatically added.

   3. Call: The Gong dialer enables reps to call people directly from Gong. These calls can be recorded, giving you the same analytics and insights as all recorded calls in Gong. To use the dialer, you must first enable it for your team, and set business numbers that are available either to you individual reps (assigned numbers) or to your entire team.

      You can use templates for call scripts to make things easy when it comes time to dial someone. 

   4. LinkedIn connect and LinkedIn message: To use LinkedIn flow steps, you must integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Gong, and you must have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced or Advanced Plus license. While both LinkedIn messages and LinkedIn connection request to-dos can be synced to your CRM, the option to Log this conversation to CRM is only available for messages and not for connection requests.

   5. Task: Tasks can be used as helpful reminders for completing any actions that aren’t necessarily email, call, or LinkedIn-related. You might create a task for sending someone a gift, preparing for an upcoming meeting, researching about a company, or any other action you want reps to complete outside of Gong.

   As you add steps, you can set the delay between steps in business days.

    

5. Grab and drag the steps on the left to rearrange them.

   

6. Define the flow’s visibility. At the top left of the flow builder, you can select Enabled or Disabled from the dropdown. For personal flows, Enabled means that you can add contacts and leads to the flow and the flow appears in the Add to flow menu for you, but not for other team members. Disabled means that no one can add contacts and leads to the flow. It does not appear in the Add to flow menu for you or other team members.

7. Once you've added steps and ordered them the way you want, click Save.

Add attachments to a flow step

You can add attachments to flow steps by clicking on the paperclip icon. If you decide to use a template that has attachments, those attachments will automatically be added to your email draft, and can be removed.

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

If you add an attachment to the flow step and then add a template that has attachments, any attachments you previously added will be removed or replaced with the template's attachments.

Email draft body size can be up to 3 MB. Draft body size does not include attachments, but it does include in-line images and GIFs. Total size of an email, including attachments, can be up to 20 MB. 

Add people to a flow

Contacts and leads from your CRM are automatically synced into Gong so you can add them to flows. You do not need to be a contact or lead owner to add them to a flow.

Add people manually

From Accounts and People, you can add someone to a flow by clicking +Add next to their name.

In People, add multiple people at once by selecting the checkbox to the left of their names, and then from the Actions menu, choose Add to flow. From the list of people you selected, we’ll identify anyone who is marked as “do not contact”, in an exclusive flow, or in other flows, so you can decide if you want to remove those people from the selection before adding them to another flow.

You can also add people to a flow from person view. Click on their name anywhere in Engage to open person view, then click +Add to flow if they're not already in one.

You can add recommended contacts to a flow the same way as long as you have their email address, so you may need to reveal an email address from a data provider or add one via the CRM updater first.

Add people automatically

For company flows, technical and business admins can set up rules for adding people to a flow automatically based on selected triggers and CRM fields. Rules for adding people automatically can only be created for company flows, not personal flows.

Identify people who finished a flow and add them to a new one

You can find the list of people previously in a specific flow and add them to a new one from Engage > People.

1. Click + Add filter and choose a field that will help you identify the flow the contacts and leads were previously in, like Engage flow name or Engage flow ID

2. Search for or select the flow the contacts and leads were previously in

3. Click + Add filter again and select Engage flow status. Maybe you want to see only the people removed from the flow because they replied, in which case, you’d select the Removed Response status

4. Now that you have the right list of people, use the checkboxes on the left to select the ones you want to add to a new flow

5. At the top right, select Add to flow from the Actions menu, and choose the new flow you’d like to add them to.

Add people to the middle of a flow

Let’s say you want to add someone to a flow, but you don’t want them to receive step 1 and step 2. Add them to the flow as you normally would, and then skip the relevant steps. You can skip steps from anywhere in Engage where your to-do list is shown.

Link flows to deals

While adding people to flows, whether individually or in bulk, you have the option to link flows to deals. Once you’ve selected people and chosen which flow they should be added to, click Link flow to deal. You can then select the deal you want each person’s flow to be linked to.

Remove people from a flow

If you remove someone from a flow and then add them back in, they will start from the beginning of the flow.

Remove individual people manually

From the Accounts and People, look for the green In flow label next to any contact or lead's name. Click the green label to manage that person's flow.

From To-dos, you can also click and then click Remove person from flow.

To remove multiple people at once, go to People and select the checkbox to the left of their names, and then from the Actions menu, choose Remove from flow.

Removing people automatically

All company and personal flows have built-in rules for automatically managing people in the flow according to certain actions. These built-in rules are listed below.

Pause people in a flow

If a flow is paused and then resumed, it will resume from the step in the flow where the person was at the time of the pause. After 30 days, anyone who is still paused in a flow will be automatically removed from the flow.

Pause individual people manually

There are a few different ways you can pause a flow for an individual person:

• From person view: From anywhere in Engage, click on a contact or lead's name to open person view in a right panel. You can also open person view while working on a to-do by going to the Contact section.

   

  From here, open the more menu and click Pause flow for this person.

• From the green In flow label: From anywhere in Engage that gives you a list of contacts and leads, such as the Accounts and People, people active in flows are marked with a green In flow label. Click on the label to pause the flow, remove them from the flow, or select a different flow. From here, you can also see who added the person to the flow and when.

   

Pause all account contacts in their flow

If there are multiple contacts in an account that are currently active in flows, you can pause them all in their flows in one go. You can do this directly from a response to-do, when someone responds to an email that was sent from a flow.

In To-dos, you'll see the response to-do showing you who responded to an email sent from a flow. At the far right of the to-do, click the more menu, and then click Pause flow for all account contacts.

After 30 days, anyone who is still paused in a flow will be automatically removed.

Pause people automatically

All flows come with a set of built-in rules that help you manage contacts and leads without missing potential opportunities for engagement. These rules automatically pause someone in their flow when:

• They respond to a flow email

• An email bounces for any reason (this includes hard bounces, such as invalid email address, and soft bounces, such as full recipient inbox)

• A meeting is booked

How does automatic pausing work when someone is in multiple flows?

For the flow to-dos “Bounced email”, “Email response”, and “Meeting booked”: only the relevant flow is automatically paused. You can choose to pause all flows for that person or all flows for the entire account

Emails already scheduled to go out from another flow to that bounced address will still send to that address unless action is taken prior to the scheduled send time

If you start drafting a new message via another flow to the email address that bounced, that bounce will have marked that address as invalid. You’ll see that it’s invalid in the “To” field when when writing the draft

OOO Response: snoozes the current to-do for all flows the person is in

Missed call back: pauses only the flow from which the call originated

Resume someone's flow

Let's say someone was paused in their flow, either manually or automatically, but you want to resume it for them so they'll continue receiving communications from the flow.

This can be done in 2 ways:

At the far right of the to-do, click the more menu, and then click Resume flow for this person.

• From the Response to-do: If someone responds to an email sent from a flow, you'll get a Response to-do in To-dos letting you know the flow has been paused for this person. Other contacts and leads who are also active in this flow are not affected.

• From the yellow Paused label: From anywhere in Engage that gives you a list of contacts and leads, such as the Accounts and People, people whose flows are paused are marked with a yellow Paused label. Click on the label to resume the flow, remove them from the flow, or select a different flow. From here, you can also see who paused the person's flow and when.

After 30 days, anyone who is still paused in a flow will be automatically removed from the flow.

See the list of people previously in a flow and each person’s detailed flow history

In Engage > Flows, select a flow and go to the People tab to see the list of people currently or previously in the flow. You can search for specific contacts or leads in the list. By default, the list is sorted by the contacts and leads that were most recently added to the flow. See the status of their current flow(s) and their “do not contact” status. From here, you can easily bulk select to move the list of people previously in this flow to into another flow.

Click View flow history next to someone’s name to see a comprehensive, chronological view of their flow history. You can use flow history for key details such as the reason why an automatic email failed to send, why someone’s flow status changed, why a flow stopped or started, and more.

Share a personal flow

Once you’ve created a personal flow, you can share it with your teammates to be viewed in their flow libraries and used when adding people to flows. You can share a specific flow with another team member or an entire team, or share a flows folder with another team member or an entire team.

To share a single flow:

1. Click themenu next to the flow 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 flow that you no longer want to be shared, you can un-share it through the same process, as long as your teammates have not added contacts or leads to it. Once contacts or leads have been added to the flow, you cannot un-share it.

The ability to share flows, as well as the ability to duplicate personal flows into company flows, are managed through your permission profile. If you don’t have access to share flows or duplicate personal flows to company flows and you think you should, talk to your admin.

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 flows that were shared with you

To see flows that have been shared with you, go to Engage > Flows and open the Shared with you folder in your flows library. You can also see flows that were shared with you when adding people to flows under the Shared with you folder.

You cannot edit content that was shared with you but owned by someone else. To modify a flow that was shared with you, duplicate it and save it to your flows. You can also archive and restore flows that were shared with you, depending on whether you want to see them in your library. Archived content is not available for use from your flows library or when adding people to flows.

Edit a flow

You can edit a flow any time, even when there are contacts and leads in an active flow.

Open the flow you want to work on by going to Engage from the main menu on the left-hand side, then Flows, then select the flow you want to work on. You can drag and drop flow steps on the left side to rearrange them or add and remove steps.

When you make changes to a flow, those updates apply to to-dos that have already been generated including scheduled auto emails, so you can fix mistakes or make improvements.

What edits are applied to existing to-dos

Message edits: Updates to the content of a step, like email copy, will reflect in existing to-dos

Timing adjustments: Changes to delays or scheduling between steps will update accordingly

New steps added to the end of the flow: These will be assigned to active contacts and leads as they reach that point in the flow.

What edits are not applied to existing to-dos

Reordering steps: Changing the order of steps won’t affect contacts already in the flow to maintain a logical progression. For example, if step 5 is moved to the beginning, contacts currently on or past step 5 won’t go back and repeat earlier steps.

Delete or archive a flow

To delete a flow, hover over the flow you want to delete. Click and select Delete. Deleting a flow removes it permanently. 

The Archive option is only available for flows in the Shared with you folder, since you cannot delete a flow that was shared with you. To archive a flow, hover over the flow you want to archive in the Shared with you section. Click and select Archive. Archived flows can be restored depending on whether you want to see them in your library. Archived content is not available for use from your flows library or when adding people to flows.

Adding an unsubscribe link

For personal flows, you have the option to add an unsubscribe link to all email steps in the flow. When toggled on, each email in the flow has a note at the bottom:

”If you'd like to stop receiving these emails, let me know."

Any time someone clicks on the link, they're removed from the flow and labeled as "do not contact".

To add an unsubscribe link, open the flow you want to edit, go to the Rules tab and toggle the unsubscribe rule on.

What happens when someone in multiple active flows is marked as “do not contact”?

If someone unsubscribes from a flow, they have the option to unsubscribe from just the relevant flow or all flows they’re currently in. They’ll be marked as “do not contact” in Gong whether they unsubscribe from one flow or all of them.

If you mark someone as “do not contact” manually, the person is automatically removed from any flows they’re currently in.

Built-in rules for all flows

All company and personal flows have the following built-in rules for automatically managing people according to certain actions. These rules are based on best practices and ensure that you're reaching out to people at the right time without spamming them.

• When someone replies via email, pause their flow

  • Does not include auto-replies or internal email responses. For example, let's say you send an email to a lead and cc your manager. If your manager replies to this email, the flow won't be paused. If the lead replies to this email, the flow will be paused.

• When an email bounces for any reason, pause the person’s flow

  • Generates a to-do for updating the email address and resuming flow

  • Automatically marks the email address as invalid

• When a meeting is booked, pause the person’s flow

  • Generates a to-do that notifies the assigned rep about the meeting and pauses the flow

• When someone is marked as “opt out” or “do not contact”, remove them from the flow

• When an auto email fails to send, convert it into a manual email

  • Auto emails can fail to send if they're missing variables, missing a recipient email address, we can't find the email thread, or the email account was disconnected

• When a recipient replies with an Out of Office message, snooze the step

  • Step will be snoozed until the recipient’s return date

  • If you get an Out of Office response from someone in a flow but Gong can't detect a date of return, that person's flow will not be snoozed. The flow will continue as planned.

Change someone's flow

If someone is already in a flow but you want to put them into a different one instead, you'll need to remove them from the flow they're currently in first.

You can do this from Accounts or People. Click on the green In flow label next to any contact or lead's name. Remove them from their current flow, and then select the new flow you want to add them to.

Flows FAQs

*The features available to you depend on your company’s plan and your assigned seats.