When you have a long list of recipients to whom you have to send the same email, Google’s Mail Merge function comes to your rescue. It allows you to send personalized emails in bulk to multiple recipients simultaneously. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to send personalized emails with Mail Merge in Gmail.
For sending customized emails through Mail Merge, Google provides a Mail Merge with Attachments add-on as an extension accessible via Google Spreadsheets. Utilizing this add-on, together with Gmail and Google Spreadsheets, you can not only send personalized emails to multiple recipients but also send different file attachments to each, schedule emails for sending at a later point in time, track email opens, clicks and much more.
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Step 1: Open Google Spreadsheets, go to Extensions > Add-ons > Get add-ons.
Step 2: Select the Mail Merge with Attachments add-on and click on Install.
Step 3: Authorize permissions to it so that it gets installed on your system. After it’s successfully installed, you will notice the Mail Merge with Attachments add-on appear as an option under the Extensions menu in Google Spreadsheets.
Step 4: Go to Extensions > Mail Merge with Attachments > Create Merge Sheet.
Step 5: A new sheet with the name Mail Merge gets created with important variable columns like First Name, Last Name, Email Address, File Attachments, etc. You can even add on more variable field columns if you want.
Step 6: Go to Extensions > Mail Merge with Attachments > Import Google Contacts to import any existing contact groups from Google Contacts into Mail Merge. You can also choose to fill in the details of the recipients in the Mail Merge spreadsheet manually.
Step 7: To add file attachments to your mail, you can paste the links of the corresponding files from your Google Drive. If there are multiple attachments, do remember to separate the links by comma separator. You can also go to Extensions > Mail Merge with Attachments > Add File Attachments > Insert Files from Google Drive to do the same.
Step 8: Next, go to your Gmail Inbox and click on Compose to draft a new message. While drafting the email, you have to use the {{ field name }} notation for including the variable fields. These placeholders will get replaced by actual data for the corresponding field in the spreadsheet. For e.g., When you type- “ Hi {{ First Name }} …”, in this format at the start of your email, the salutation gets customized for each individual, with the First Name placeholder getting replaced with the actual names mentioned in the spreadsheet under that column.
Step 9: Now that our template is ready, go to the Google Spreadsheet again and go to Extensions > Mail Merge with Attachments > Configure Mail Merge. Add all the sender details asked in the pop-up window and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the Mail Merge process.
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In this way, you can send personalized emails with Mail Merge in Gmail to a large group of people simultaneously. If the recipient list is quite long, then the Mail Merge function turns out to be a huge saviour. And each email sent to the recipients is uniquely addressed to them, giving it a personal touch. However, if you’re using Mail Merge for the very first time, we recommend you have a trial run before sending the actual emails.
If you know of any other method how to send personalized emails with Mail Merge in Gmail, do let us know in the comments section below.
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