HubSpot email templates let you save, reuse, and share pre-written emails so your team never types the same message twice. You create a template once, store it in HubSpot, and any team member can pull it up from the CRM record, the inbox, or their sequences tool and send it in seconds. This guide covers how to build templates, where they live, how to personalise them with tokens, and the practices that make templates genuinely useful over time.
Go to Conversations > Templates in your HubSpot portal. You can also reach it from Sales > Templates if you have a Sales Hub seat. This is the central library where all templates live.
Click “New template” and choose whether to build it from scratch or start from a HubSpot-provided starter. Give it a clear name, assign it to a team folder so others can find it, and write your subject line and body.
Use the token picker (the { } icon) to drop in contact, company, or deal properties. Common ones: First name, Company name, Deal name, Owner first name. Tokens pull live values from the CRM record at send time.
Create folders by team or stage: Prospecting, Follow-up, Proposal, Onboarding. Reps who can’t find a template won’t use it.
By default, templates are visible to your whole team. If a template is role-specific, note that in the name so it doesn’t get pulled in the wrong context.
What types of email templates can you create in HubSpot?
HubSpot templates work for any plain-text or lightly formatted email. Three common types:
- Sales outreach templates — first-touch prospecting emails, follow-up nudges, meeting requests. Used from contact and deal records, and inside HubSpot Sequences.
- Support and service templates — acknowledgement replies, resolution emails, survey requests. Used from the Conversations inbox.
- Internal handoff templates — structured messages your team sends between teams when passing a contact from sales to onboarding or support.
Templates are separate from HubSpot marketing emails, which go to lists and require a subscription. Templates are one-to-one, sent from a connected personal inbox.
How do personalisation tokens work in HubSpot email templates?
Tokens reference a property stored on the CRM object. When someone inserts a template on a contact record, HubSpot replaces the token with the live property value for that contact. If the property is blank, HubSpot either leaves it empty or uses a default value you set.
Common token categories:
- Contact tokens: First name, Last name, Email, Phone, Job title, Company name, Lifecycle stage
- Company tokens: Company name, Industry, City, Website URL
- Deal tokens: Deal name, Deal stage, Close date, Amount
- Owner tokens: Owner first name, Owner email, Owner meeting link (from Meetings tool)
- Sender tokens: Sender first name, Sender email, Sender phone
Before you set a default value, decide what the fallback should say. “Hi there” is fine for first name. A blank company name in “I enjoyed our conversation about {{company.name}}” looks like an error, so either set a sensible default or restructure the sentence to avoid it.
How do you use a template when sending an email?
From a CRM record, click the email icon to open the compose window. You will see a “Templates” button in the toolbar. Click it, search or browse by folder, and click Insert. The subject and body populate. Review and adjust before sending.
From the Conversations inbox, the same Templates button appears in the reply composer.
Inside Sequences, you add templates to steps rather than inserting them per-send. Each sequence step references a template; personalisation tokens resolve when the sequence enrols a contact.
Can you track template performance in HubSpot?
Yes. HubSpot shows open rate and click rate per template, aggregated across everyone who used it. Go to Conversations > Templates, and the columns show usage count, open rate, and click rate.
This data is useful for finding which templates actually get responses. A template with high opens but low replies suggests the subject line works but the body asks for something too big. A template with low opens often has a weak subject line or is getting ignored because the timing is off.
Note: open tracking requires your connected inbox to support tracking pixels (most do), and click tracking requires HubSpot’s tracking links to be active on your account.
What is the template limit in HubSpot?
Template limits depend on your HubSpot tier:
- Free and Starter: 5 templates across the account
- Professional and Enterprise: no stated cap; in practice, portals run thousands of templates without issue
At Starter, teams often hit the limit quickly. Prioritise the 5 most-used templates, or upgrade to Professional if templates are a core part of your outreach workflow.
What makes a high-performing email template?
A few practices that hold up across industries:
- Short subject lines. Six to eight words. Subject lines that explain exactly what the email is about tend to out-perform clever ones for transactional and follow-up emails.
- One clear ask per email. Templates that ask the reader to do two things get half the response rate on each. Pick the single most important action.
- Tokens used correctly. Personalisation looks great when the data is clean. It looks broken when the contact’s company field says “N/A” or is blank. Audit your CRM data before deploying templates widely.
- Plain text for one-to-one emails. Heavy HTML formatting signals marketing email to both spam filters and recipients. Outreach and follow-up templates generally perform better as plain text or minimal formatting.
- A review cycle. Templates go stale. A quarterly review to update offers, check that links still work, and retire underperforming templates keeps the library useful.
How do HubSpot email templates work with Sequences?
Sequences use templates as the content for each automated email step. When you build a sequence, you add steps and either write the email inline or pull an existing template. Changes to the template after the sequence is active will apply to future enrolments but not to contacts already mid-sequence.
This separation gives you two levels of control: the template (the reusable copy) and the sequence (the timing logic). Update copy in the template; adjust timing in the sequence step settings.
More on how sequences work: HubSpot Sequences Guide.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use images in HubSpot email templates?
Yes. The template editor supports inline images. For one-to-one outreach, use images sparingly. An image-heavy template sent as a personal email looks like a marketing blast.
Are templates shared across the whole team?
By default, yes. Any template you create is visible to team members with the Templates tool. You can organise by folder to keep the library clean, but there is no per-user privacy setting on templates in most tiers.
Can I use templates in the HubSpot mobile app?
Yes. The HubSpot mobile app (iOS and Android) supports inserting templates from the email compose view on a contact or deal record.
Do HubSpot email templates work with Gmail and Outlook?
Yes, through the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension (Gmail) or the HubSpot Sales add-in (Outlook). Once installed, a Templates button appears in your Gmail or Outlook compose window, pulling templates directly from your HubSpot library.
What is the difference between templates and snippets?
Templates are full emails with a subject line and body. Snippets are short text blocks you insert mid-email, such as a pricing table or a set of FAQ answers. Templates replace the whole draft; snippets add to it.
An independent informational resource produced by a HubSpot Platinum Partner. HubSpot is a trademark of HubSpot, Inc.
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