Use Mail Merge with Gmail to send personalized email messages to a large group of people from your Google account. Available at http://labnol.org/?p=20981

1. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Mail Merge with Gmail
Use Mail Merge with Gmail to send personalized email messages to a large group of people from
your Gmail account.
The program is written in Google Apps Script and includes support for email aliases and Gmail
templates. Google only allows 100 emails 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%
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2. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 2
Open the Google Spreadsheet link that you received in my email and click "Yes, make a copy" to
create a copy of the sheet in your Google Drive.
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3. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
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 Email Address (the address of the recipient) and Mail Merge Status (that
will indicate whether the mails have been sent to the recipients or not).
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4. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 4
Fill the sheet with the required data but keep the last column (Mail Merge Status) blank.
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5. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 5
Go to the Mail Merge Menu and click Initialize.
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6. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 6
Click OK at the authorization prompt
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7. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
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.
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8. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 8
Go to the Mail Merge Menu again and click the Configure option.
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9. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 9
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Select the column in the spreadsheet that contains the recipient's emai address.
Select the Gmail template that you created in the previous step.
Choose your Gmail alias that will appear as the FROM address
Enter the replyTo address where you would like to receive replies
Enter your name that will appear in the message header.
Enter the Google Analytics Tracking ID (optional)
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.
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10. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Email Output
The program will now run Mail Merge in the background and you may close the Google sheet. The
first batch of emails 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.
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11. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 10: Mail Tracking with Google Analytics
Go to Google Analytics, switch to the Reporting tab and then choose the Event report under RealTime to track mail open activity in real time.
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12. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Step 11: Email Open Reports
Inside Google Analytics, expand the Behavior group and choose Events. Now select the date range
and you'll see all mail activity around your email campaign.
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13. Mail Merge for Gmail v5.0
Email Report - Google Analytics
You can click the category name and switch to the Event Label dimension to see a list of recipients
who have read your email.
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: http://twitter.com/labnol
Web: Digital Inspiration
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