How to Mail merge with personalization and attachments using "Gmail"

How to Mail merge with personalization and attachments using "Gmail"

People generally use Gmail’s Bcc feature when sending an email to large number of people at the same time then what makes Gmail Mail Merge better?

Everyone knows that an email resonates better with the recipient if it’s personalized. If you want to stand out in your emails, personalization is the way ahead with information from your database like the recipients’ name, company or address.

A mail merge program helps you send personalized email messages to multiple contacts in one go. Each message has the same content but some parts of the message can be customized – like you can greet each recipient by their first name.

Gmail Mail Merge is for whom?

Many people benefit from being able to use Gmail Mail Merge. Typical use cases include:

Mail Merge in Gmail is for everyone. If you are organizing a party at your home, you can send personalized email invitations to all your friends with the help of mail merge. A business owner can use mail merge to inform customers about upcoming deals and offers. Sales and marketing teams use Mail Merge for drip campaigns. Teachers can send individual assignments and reports to students, Account Executives, marketing managers, PR consultants, Entrepreneurs, teachers, business associates, friends, HR executives etc,.

Gmail’s mail Merge Features

Ø One-click importing of Google Contacts for sending personalized emails

Ø Insert different file attachments for each email recipient.

Ø Upload files from your computer or select existing documents from your Google Drive

Ø Send merged emails immediately or schedule message for sending later.

Ø Automatically CC or BCC every email message to your CRM or any other email address.

Ø Automatically create drafts in Gmail from Mail Merge and review them before sending.

Ø Send emails on behalf of any another email address that is configured as an alias in Gmail.

Ø Write your messages in plain text, rich HTML or use an existing Gmail draft as and email template.

Ø Track your email opens  (read receipts) and clicks on links  [Premium]

Ø Add an unsubscribe link to your email campaigns, view unsubscribes report  [Premium]

Ø Email bounced reports show messages that were not delivered [Premium]

Ø Give your contacts an option to unsubscribe from your mail list [Premium]

Ø Send a test email to verify your Mail Merge campaign setting before sending the email blast to all recipients

Ø Set the Mail Merge Status column to SKIP if you would like to skip merging certain rows in the current batch.

 

How to Create Mail Merge with Gmail
Microsoft Outlook with Word has Mail Merge functionality built-in but if you are a Gmail or Google Apps user, you may still use mail merge easily with the help of Google Docs.

And though the Mail Merge program using Google Docs, this is not limited to Gmail users. If you have linked your Hotmail or Yahoo! account with a Google Account, you may use that or any non-Gmail address with Mail Merge as well.

Mail Merge with File Attachments – Step by Step

The new version of Gmail Mail Merge program offers support for rich-text (HTML) email templates, you may add file attachments with the outgoing messages, there’s an option to BCC emails to yourself and better overall usability. Let’s get started:

1: Open this Google spreadsheet and create a copy of the same in your Google Docs account (File –> Make a Copy). If you have trouble accessing the sheet, please try this link.

 2: Under the new “Mail Merge” menu, click on “Reset” to clear the canvas and also authorize Google Docs to access your Gmail and Google Contacts.

                                            
3: Open Google Contacts and create a new Group with all the contacts who you would like to send a personalized email. Alternatively, you may simply add the recipient’s name and email addresses manually in the Google Sheet.

 4: Click Mail Merge –> Import Google Contacts and type the name of the Google Contacts group that you created in Step 3. Google Docs will now automatically import all the relevant Gmail contacts into the spreadsheet.

5: Fill the various fields of the email template (highlighted in white).

 You can compose an email template in rich text using the HTML Mail tool and then copy-paste the generated HTML code into the message body field of the Google Sheet.

 If you would like to add an attachment to your email messages – say a PDF file or an Office document – just upload that file to Google Docs and copy-paste the ID of the file into the Attachment ID field. You can find the ID of a Google Docs file in its URL.

6: Go to the Mail Merge menu again and click “Start Mail Merge” – the status against the names of your Gmail contacts will change to “OK” for all email messages that were successfully delivered through Google Docs.

That’s it! You’ve just completed your first mail merge using Gmail and Google Docs.

*Gmail has a daily sending limit and any messages that are dispatched using the Gmail Mail Merge program also count in that limit. You can send a maximum of 500 messages in a day.

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