Who's this for? Reps
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.
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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.
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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.
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:
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Go to Engage from the top menu bar and open the Flows page
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Scroll to your Company flows folder
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Hover over the flow you want to duplicate. Click
and select Duplicate
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Choose the folder where you want the duplicated flow to live
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Open the duplicated flow to edit it.
To create a new flow from scratch:
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Go to Engage from the top menu bar and open the Flows page
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At the top right, click +NEW FLOW
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Starting from the top, click the pencil to give the flow a name
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Start adding steps. These are the types of steps you can add to a flow:
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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.
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.
With regular 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.
If a contact or lead has multiple email addresses, Gong sends the flow step to the email listed first.
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.
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Auto-send email: With auto-send email steps, Engage sends the email automatically. Auto-send 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.
Auto-send emails are sent between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM (according to the sender’s time zone) and on business days only (not Saturdays or Sundays).
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.
It's common practice to start a flow with an auto email as the first step so that it sends as soon as someone is added to the flow. To make sure this happens, the delay from flow start for that step should be set to '0 business days'. If someone is added to a flow before 9:00 AM of the sender's time zone, the email will go out at around 9:00 AM on the same day the person was added to the flow. If someone is added to a flow after 9:00 AM of the sender's time zone, the email is automatically sent within the next few minutes.
If you add an auto email step after another step and set the delay to '0 business days', the auto email will go out a few minutes after the previous step is completed. It will not be delayed until 9:00 AM of the following day.
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Call: The Gong dialer enables you 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, your admin must enable it for you, and must set business numbers that are available either to you specifically (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.
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LinkedIn connect and LinkedIn message: To use LinkedIn flow steps, your admin must integrate LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Gong, and you must have a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Advanced or Advanced Plus license.
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Task: Use tasks 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 to complete outside of Gong.
As you add steps, you can set the delay between steps in business days.
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Grab and drag the steps on the left to rearrange them. Note that once you add people to a flow, you can still edit flow steps, but you can't change their order.
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Once you've added steps and ordered them the way you want, click Save.
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.
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 the Accounts and People pages, you can add someone to a flow by clicking +Add next to their name.
On the People page, 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.
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.
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 pages, 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 the To-dos page, you can also click and then click Remove person from flow.
To remove multiple people at once, go to the People page 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.
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:
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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.
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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 pages, 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.
On the To-dos page, 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:
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They respond to a flow email
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An email bounces
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.
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From the Response to-do: If someone responds to an email sent from a flow, you'll get a Response to-do on your To-dos page 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.
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From the yellow Paused label: From anywhere in Engage that gives you a list of contacts and leads, such as the Accounts and People pages, 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.
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 no longer wish to receive these emails, unsubscribe"
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.
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.
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When someone replies via email, pause their flow
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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.
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When an email bounces, pause the person’s flow
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Generates a to-do for updating the email address and resuming flow
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When someone is marked as “opt out” or “do not contact”, remove them from the flow
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When an auto email fails to send, convert it into a manual email
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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
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When a recipient replies with an Out of Office message, snooze the step
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Step will be snoozed until the recipient’s return date
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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 the Accounts page or People page. 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.
Sending a large number of emails all at once may raise red flags for Internet service providers. To help your company maintain a healthy sender reputation and avoid getting marked as spam, your admin can set up flow email limits for the following categories:
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Number of flow emails from the same sender per day/per week
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Number of flow emails sent from the same domain (company) per day
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Number of flow emails sent from your company to the same recipient per day
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Number of flow emails sent from your company to recipients within the same domain (company) per day
What happens if you reach an email limit?
While all types of emails count towards reaching the limit, once it is reached, only flow emails will be limited. This means you can continue sending manual emails once the limit is reached.
Flow emails: Edit the email or schedule it to be sent another day
Auto send flow emails: These will be automatically snoozed and sent on the next available business day
Non-flow emails: Even if you reach a limit, you can still send a manual email to someone
In addition to setting email limits, Gong offers more strategies you can use for ensuring your emails are delivered successfully.
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