Mail merges allows you to contact a large number of people with a customized personal message. Setting up a mail merge in Gmail allows you to scale your email outreach within the app.
With more than 1.5 billion active users, many businesses rely on Gmail to send emails daily. Gmail has become the default email client for many businesses – especially because it’s free.
Mail merges can be incredibly useful and time-saving when sending out emails. Here’s how to do a mail merge in Gmail.
What Is a Mail Merge?
A mail merge allows you to send personalized messages to multiple contacts via email in one go.
While most of the message remains the same, there are some aspects of the email that can be customized, including the name of the recipient, addresses, subject lines, and more.
Reasons to Do a Mail Merge in Gmail
There are many reasons you may want to use a mail merge if you’re running a business.
A mail merge allows you to personalize communications such as:
- Emails to customers with important information about your business or service
- Updates to customers about upcoming deals or offers
- Mass emails to journalists to let them know about a recent PR campaign
If you aren’t a business, using a mail merge in Gmail can still come in handy. For example, you can:
- Email students about new assignments if you’re a teacher
- Use mail merge to send out all the invites to a party at the same time
How to Do a Mail Merge in Gmail {with Right Inbox}
Step 1: Make sure you’ve installed Right Inbox. For the mail merge capabilities you will need to have the paid plan. See pricing options here.
Step 2: Open Up your Gmail account and click on the mail merge button.
Step 3: Add your intended recipients to the mail merge. You can upload a CSV file or add the email addresses in manually.
Step 4: (Optional): If you used a CSV file and uploaded your list now you must map the columns. Provide a default common value and uncheck the columns you don’t want to import.
Step 5: Now it’s time to add your email copy for this mail merge. Activate your email follow ups for this campaign. Use your email templates here if you’ve tried and trusted copy.
Step 6: Preview the emails in the mail merge. You can also personalize each email individually if you’d like to.
Step 7: Enable/ disable email tracking and the send rate for this campaign. Once you’ve confirmed your requirements you can start the mail merge.
And that’s it. Sit back and watch the replies come in!
Install Right Inbox from the chrome store today!
Create a Mail Merge Using Google Sheets and Gmail
As mail merge isn’t a native feature to Gmail, you’ll have to use a workaround. This method using Google Sheets and Gmail is one of the most popular.
Step 1. Head over here and make a copy of the Gmail/Google Sheets Mail Merge spreadsheet template.
Step 2. Then, you’ll need to add the email addresses of your recipients into the column marked Recipient.
Step 3. Head over to your Gmail account and draft up the message you’d like to send. You can use placeholders like {{First Name}} for the fields that will be personalized – just make sure they correspond to the column names; otherwise this won’t work. This tells Gmail what data to pull into the message.
Step 4. When your email is drafted and the data is all filled in, select Mail Merge and then Send Emails.
Step 5. You should now see a pop up telling you that the script requires authorization to run – click Continue. You may also need to confirm that you’re happy to proceed – don’t worry, it’s safe. Click Go to Gmail/Sheets Mail Merge
Step 6. Copy and paste your email message into the box that appears.
Step 7. Click OK.
Step 8. You should now see that the Email Sent column has updated to say that the emails have been sent.
Creating Additional Columns in the Google Sheet
Would you like to add more data to your emails? That’s pretty simple as well.
Step 1. Click on the next column to the right.
Step 2. Add in your text using the {{}} annotation – for example {{Address}}
Step 3. Try to make sure that you don’t change the Recipient or Email Sent columns – otherwise you’ll have to go into the Script Editor and update them.
Additional Reading: How to Create a Mail Merge with Google Sheets
Things to Remember With Gmail and Mail Merges
When using Gmail for mail merging, always use a legitimate business address where you can as this improves deliverability.
In addition, keep in mind that there is a limit of 500 emails a day – after that, you’ll have to wait 24 hours before you can send any more emails. We created an in depth guide on Gmail’s sending limits so you know exactly what’s permitted with your account.
Other than that, Gmail is a great – and free – way to mail merge.
But this is the easiest solution that’s currently available for mail merging in Gmail. Right Inbox’s new mail merge feature that will allow you to carry out a mail merge directly in Gmail. Using the Right Inbox plugin, it makes the process even easier and more convenient. Don’t sacrifice the personal touch as you ramp up your email outreach going forward.
