Mail merge is a facility offered by mail clients that enables you to send personalized messages to multiple recipients at the same instance with little amount of time and effort. If you want to send a customized mass e-mail using Gmail, Mail merge is a useful option. In today’s digital marketing world, companies use this option for sending mass marketing e-mails.
In this mass e-mailing, the e-mail content will be same; however, few things can be customized like using first name to greet the recipient. This application is not limited to sending just plain text messages, it supports HTML e-mail templates and the user can also attach files if needed. User can add CC’s and insert the images as well in this application.
In this application, user can schedule the mail delivery time and further, track whether the e-mail has been read or not. It’s almost like sending a usual e-mail to more number of recipients with no effort.
The Mail merge option in Google Docs is not limited to Gmail account, users can use Hotmail or Yahoo account if they are associated with their Google account. User can use any other e-mail address apart from Gmail with this add on. It will be quite useful in sending personalized invitations, marketing e-mails, reminders, and lot other communication. So mail merge is not only for individual users, it also works for companies in business development.
How does Mail Merge work in Gmail?
In order to use the Mail Merge feature in Google, user should have this add-on or application installed. Mail Merge can be used by installing a mail merge add-on in Google account or by installing Mail merge application from Google apps domain.
Once the Mail merge is installed, follow the below instructions to use it.
- Create a spreadsheet with First Name, Last Name, and e-mail address columns
- Open Gmail and draft the e-mail message that has to be sent. Please make sure to replace the recipient’s name with %First Name% in the greeting part as it uses the first name from the data base.
- Create a contact group in Gmail to which mails has to be sent
- Open the active spreadsheet which was created already and copy it into Google Docs
- Locate mail merge option under Add-ons listed extreme right on top of the menu bar in spreadsheet
- Choose the “Contact Group” to be used, in the “Import Gmail Contacts” option under configure Mail merge menu. You can even add recipients’ details manually in the spread sheet.
- After authorizing Google docs to use the ‘Contact’ group from Gmail, fill in all the fields in the e-mail template.
- Cross check if everything is okay then click on “Run Mail Merge” option
- Mail will be sent to all the recipients
Point to remember: Gmail has limitation in sending e-mails per day, so user should keep that in mind while sending the e-mails. All delivered messages will be counted in this application logs.
