Message Templates
Message Templates
Templates are reusable message content you author once and send many times, with merge fields that personalise each message per recipient. ZingaConnect has two kinds of template, because Email/SMS and WhatsApp work differently.
Email and SMS templates
Email and SMS templates are content you own and control. There is no external review step — you write them, and ZingaConnect renders them at send time by substituting each recipient's details. One template type serves both channels:
- Email templates have a subject line and a rich HTML body (with an optional plain-text version). You can set a From name, From email, and Reply-to, choose which email sending account the template uses, attach files, add custom headers, and prepend a reusable header block (a masthead or banner authored once and shared across templates).
- SMS templates are plain text only — no subject, no HTML.
Templates carry a loose category (marketing, transactional, notification, and so on) to help you organise them, and each template records the merge fields it uses so you can see at a glance what data it expects.
How merge fields work
A merge field is a token written in double curly braces that is replaced with the recipient's value when the message is sent:
Hi {{first_name}}, thanks for being with us.
The editor offers a picker of available fields grouped by area, including:
- Contact — first name, last name, full name, email, phone, job title
- Account — company, owner name
- Sender — your company name, sender name
- System — unsubscribe link
- Tracking — external identifiers you can drop into custom headers for integrations
Fallback values
You can give a field a fallback for recipients who are missing that value, using a pipe:
Hi {{first_name|there}},
If the contact has no first name, the message reads "Hi there,". The rules ZingaConnect applies when rendering a token:
- If the recipient has a value, use it.
- Otherwise, if you wrote a fallback after the
|, use the fallback. - Otherwise, leave the token visible (for example
{{first_name}}), so a missing merge value is obvious in testing rather than silently blank.
You can preview any template against sample values before you send.
WhatsApp templates
WhatsApp is different: to message a contact outside an open 24-hour conversation window, WhatsApp requires a pre-approved template. ZingaConnect manages these templates and mirrors their review state from your WhatsApp Business provider.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Local | A draft you have created but not yet submitted for review |
| Pending | Submitted and awaiting review |
| Approved | Reviewed and approved — ready to send |
| Rejected / Paused / Disabled | Not sendable; the rejection reason is shown when available |
Only approved templates can be sent. Each WhatsApp template has a name, a language, and a category (Marketing, Utility, or Authentication), and is made up of the standard components — header, body, footer, and buttons. You author a template, submit it for review, and ZingaConnect keeps its status and quality rating in sync so you always know what is safe to send.
Where templates are used
- Campaigns reference templates on each step — Email/SMS steps use an Email or SMS template; WhatsApp steps use an approved WhatsApp template.
- The inbox lets an agent send a template into a conversation.
Templates are account-wide and reusable across any of your provider accounts on the same channel. For sending templates programmatically, see the Developer API Reference chapter.