Home / Online Help / Marketing / Creating Letter Templates

Creating Letter Templates

You can insert merge codes into your Letters to pull field values from CRM modules and insert them into your document. You don’t have to utilise this feature, but we’ll show you how to do it and you can skip this step if it’s not applicable.

You can also refer to Using Templates and Using Letter Templates to learn more about when and how you to use Letter Templates.

Create a Template

Part of the Letter Template creation process will be done in your CRM and Microsoft Word.
You should have a letter already saved in Microsoft Word that you want to add to the system so that you can proceed with this section.
Note that only .doc Word files are accepted by the system, so you will need to make sure you’ve saved your letter with this format.

Create a Letter Template in CRM

Navigate to SMS Templates.

Accessing Letter Templates

Click on New Letter Template in the top right corner.
You can also view and manage all of your Letter Templates from this page.

Creating a new Letter Template

The following form will open, allowing you to customise your template. Enter in the following basic information first and then we’ll look at how to create your letter:

Template Name – enter a specific name that will make it easy to find and use this particular template in future e.g. Reminder letter for accounts overdue by more than 30 days.
Description – you can add more details in this field so other users understand where and when they should use this template.
Source Name – this is the module in CRM where you would like to use the template. In this case, you can choose from a Company or Contact and we’re going to use a Contact in the example.
Subject – enter a subject.
Gear icon – clicking this will open up a new tab with merge fields you can copy into your letter to insert data from the CRM module directly into your message e.g. you can add the FirstName field code to personalise the letter. There’s a more detailed example of how to do this below.
Is Active – as we are creating a new Template, tick this box. If you wanted to deactivate the Template in future, you would untick the box.
Convert to PDF – the default state for your Template is a Microsoft Word document, but you have the option to convert this to a PDF. A situation where this would be useful is if you wanted to attach a letter to an email that is sent to your customers – PDF would be a neater and more professional format for your attachment than a Word document.
Body – upload an existing Word document (.doc format only) that you have already created. We’ll show you how to create a word document with CRM merge fields below.
Click on Save & Close at the top of the form and you are now ready to use your Letter Template.

Creating a Letter Template

Add merge data to your Letter

Clicking on the gear icon when setting up your Letter Template will open a new tab with merge codes for the CRM module you are attaching the Template to e.g. Contacts.

Example of merge codes for Contacts

You can copy these codes into your word document letter and automatically insert data from the CRM module – the example below shows the Contact First Name, Last Name and relevant postal address fields added so that the will display the field values when it is sent to the customer e.g. ‘Bill Posters, 123 Springfield St, Sydney NSW 2000’ and ‘Dear Bill’.

Using merge fields in MS Word to create a Letter Template

When finished adding merge fields to your document, ensure it is saved as .doc format and then upload it to the Body field in CRM when creating a new Letter Template.
Click on Save & Close at the top of the form and you are now ready to use your Letter Template.