Using Mailmerge to send bulk customized e-mails.
Ever wanted to send an invite to a whole lot of people by e-mail & wanted it to look professional rather then sending a generic one to all users Bcc'ed ?
Here is a method to generate bulk personalized e-mails to a set of uses ( from a list ) using the mail Merge Feature of Microsoft Word. ( Outlook used to send the e-mail )
- Add the Recipients to your outlook contacts ( Highly recommended as this would simplify the steps later on -
If needed create a subfolder in the contacts folder. )
- Open Microsoft Word.
- Select the "Mailing" tab from the ribbon.
- Start mail merge > e-mail messages.
Here Type the body of your e-mail.
- "Select recipients" > Select from outlook contacts
- Preview the e-mail by selecting the "Preview Results" Icon.
- Click on Finish & merge
- Click on Send e-mail Messages
- Type the Subject of the e-mail
- Click on Ok.
Further Options to customize the e-mail
- You can Customize the Greeting from the below menus
Greeting Line Or Insert Merge Field ( More Granular control )
e.g. Each e-mail could be customized with a Dear Mr. xyz ( Pulled from the contact information )
For more information : read the word help file. ( It has detailed instructions on all the options you see on the ribbon )
Lesson Learnt the Hard way:
Keep your machine Disconnected from the network ( or Keep outlook offline )
After the mails are generated, review them from the outlook outbox. If the e-mails are as expected, go ahead & make outlook online to have the e-mail sent.
Comments
- Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Wow that's a very nice tip, thanks.