If you use tokens in your Sequences, Campaigns, or Application Review, you will inevitably come across a situation where a message preview to a candidate shows the token as blank space instead of their Company, Title, etc (Custom tokens
Whether Gem was unable to find a piece of information (ex. Company, Title, etc.) while parsing their resume or you did not fill in the field yourself, if you use the token assigned to a blank candidate information field in Gem within your outreach sequence, your candidate will also see a blank space in your message.
This article will walk you through the steps to create fallbacks for your tokens, allowing you to continue using tokens in your sequences for a high degree of message personalization, but at the same time, creating a backup phrase or value to send candidates in the event that the assigned information field in their Gem profile is blank.
Example of some blank candidate tokens #{{reason}}, #{{extra1}}, #{{extra2}}, and #{{extra3}}:
In the case where we aren’t able to pre-populate text for a token because it isn’t filled out in a candidate’s Gem profile, it will show as blank in their Sequence, Campaign, or Application Review. This is not ideal and can result in some awkwardly phrased messages, so we’ll want the token to populate with some backup content to make sure your sequences make sense.
The solution: We can do this by inserting the “|” character, followed by a fallback value/phrase into our tokens.
Here is an example:
Let’s say the Custom Token we are using is #{{reason|I really liked your profile and work history}} and this is your sequence template:
Hi #{{first_name}},
Happy #{{day_of_week}}! #{{reason|I really liked your profile and work history}}.
If John’s Gem profile has the Reason text box filled out in the extension sidebar, the Reason content will be sent.
Here, John’s Reason field is filled out, so he would see something like this:
Hi John,
Happy Monday! I’m reaching out to you because we both worked for Acme, Inc and I really like what you’ve worked on since then.
If John’s Reason box is empty, Gem will use the fallback that you’ve assigned instead in {{reason|I really liked your profile and work history}}. This means he would see the following:
Hi John,
Happy Monday! I really liked your profile and work history.
In summary, when you create a candidate token fallback and there is a value for that token, Gem will default to that value. But in cases where you haven’t input a value or no value is currently assigned, Gem will default to the value or text on the right of the “|” character. This allows you to make sure token values always populate for a candidate, even when their information fields aren’t all filled out in Gem.
Have any issues or questions on this topic? Please feel free to contact your dedicated Gem Customer Success Manager directly or our Support team at support@gem.com.