How to Send Personalized Emails using Mail Merge in Gmail

Sending out multiple emails to multiple people can be a headache especially if you wanted it to look like it is just for a specific person or recipient. Actually, by using Mail Merge, this can be easier. However, Mail Merge is originally attached to Outlook. Some email senders are not into Outlook limiting them to enjoy the capabilities of Mail Merge. Actually, this tutorial will teach you how to use Mail Merge in Gmail in a very easy way.

First, just open your Gmail account which will be used as the sender of emails. Now, click the “compose” button to start writing an email. However, you should take note that there will be some changes with how you write the email as you need to consider some of the variables which should be edited. For example, you are going to modify the “Dear (First Name of the recipient). Now, to make this as a usable variable, you should edit it and make it look like this:

Dear $%First-Name%

Take note that all of the included variable should be edited as what is shown on the screen shot. Now, after changing the variable, save the email as draft and have a copy of this spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aofk8L6brI_edENNSllYLXVqRERVOHBKblRvQ29sRWc&newcopy=true) on your Google Docs. This is HIGHLY IMPORTANT for the next steps.

Now, since you have saved your email as draft, you will now proceed to the spreadsheet. If you will notice, there are several columns which include the variables included on your email. From there, under the variables on each column, include the text you anted to be replaced on the variable you included on the email. Make sure that the variable included on the spreadsheet is exactly the same with the one you have included on your email. After typing in all the desired names and information on each column, go to the Mail Merge menu in your Google docs and click “Start Mail Merge”. Since it is your first time to run this application, just allow it to have access. It will never go through the private details of your Gmail account.

Now that you have allowed the access of Mail Merge, you can now start using it just like sending a typical email.

Important Notes:

1. On the shown image, there is a column showing the words “EMAIL_SENT”. Actually, it will only appear once the email has been successfully sent to the recipients name along with the term.
2. Keep in mind that there is an ongoing sending limit provided by Gmail which is just 500 email messages everyday. Exceeding on this limit can lock your Gmail account temporarily.