Use Mail Merge with Gmail to send personalized messages to a large group of people from your Gmail account.

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1 Mail Merge with Gmail Use Mail Merge with Gmail to send personalized messages to a large group of people from your Gmail account. The program is written in Google Apps Script and includes support for aliases and Gmail templates. Google only allows 100 s per day so the Mail Merge program will split bigger jobs into smaller batches and execute them at custom intervals so as not to exceed the daily quota. See this video tutorial on Youtube for a quick demo. Step 1 Compose a draft message in Gmail. You can add inline images, one or more file attachments and also include recipients in the CC and BCC fields. The variable columns are written in the format $%COLUMN-NAME%. For instance, if you have a column named First Name in the Google Spreadsheet, you can add this variable in the Gmail draft message as $%First-Name% Digital Inspiration Page 1

2 Step 2 Open the Google Spreadsheet link that you received in my and click "Yes, make a copy" to create a copy of the sheet in your Google Drive. Digital Inspiration Page 2

3 Step 3 Open the Mail Merge sheet and add the variable fields that you have included in the Gmail draft message. For instance, in our example, we have 2 variable fields - First Name and Tour Date. We also need to have a separate column for Address (the address of the recipient) and Mail Merge Status (that will indicate whether the mails have been sent to the recipients or not). Digital Inspiration Page 3

4 Step 4 Fill the sheet with the required data but keep the last column (Mail Merge Status) blank. Digital Inspiration Page 4

5 Step 5 Go to the Mail Merge Menu and click Initialize. Digital Inspiration Page 5

6 Step 6 Click OK at the authorization prompt Digital Inspiration Page 6

7 Step 7 You'll see the permissions dialog. Click Accept here. You are running the script in your own Google Drive and no one else other than you will have access to any of your data. Digital Inspiration Page 7

8 Step 8 Go to the Mail Merge Menu again and click the Configure option. Digital Inspiration Page 8

9 Step 9 1. Select the column in the spreadsheet that contains the recipient's emai address. 2. Select the Gmail template that you created in the previous step. 3. Choose your Gmail alias that will appear as the FROM address 4. Enter the replyto address where you would like to receive replies 5. Enter your name that will appear in the message header. Click the Initiate Mail Merge button to save your changes. It make take 10 seconds for Google Sheet to close the dialog, so please do not press the button twice. Digital Inspiration Page 9

10 Output The program will now run Mail Merge in the background and you may close the Google sheet. The first batch of s will go approximately 2 minutes after you have clicked the Mail Merge button. You can check the Sent Items folder of your Gmail mailbox to see all the sent message. Here's a sample of how the mails will look like in the recipient's mailbox. Digital Inspiration Page 10

11 Mail Merge - Daily Limit You can only send mails to a maximum of 100 recipients per day using Google Scripts. For instance, if you are sending a mail merge to two addresses - one in the To list and other CC list - that will be counted as 2 messages and you'll then be able to send only 50 mails that day. That's a limitation imposed by Google to prevent abuse of the platform. You can however use the Mail Merge program to send mails to even larger groups and the script will automatically split the job into smaller batches to prevent itself from exceeding the quota. For instance, if you are sending mails to 150 recipients, the program will send mails to the 1st 100 recipients in the first day and the next 50 will get the mails the next day when the quota has reset. For help and support, contact the author at amit@labnol.org Twitter: Web: Digital Inspiration Digital Inspiration Page 11