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.