Mail Merge for Gmail is the last word journalist outreach instrument for Marcom and PR professionals. Ship personalised and focused e mail pitches and press releases to your media contacts with Gmail.
John is a public relations skilled and he’s usually required you to ship press releases and occasion invitations to journalists, bloggers and influencers by way of e mail.
Reaching out to particular person journalists will be sluggish so how do you ship the identical e mail to a number of individuals in a single go? Some individuals use the BCC possibility in Gmail – compose a single e mail, put e mail addresses of all recipients within the BCC discipline and hit ship.
That’s clearly the best possibility for sending bulk emails by Gmail however such generic e mail pitches are unlikely to get seen.
Ship E-mail Pitches with Gmail
On this tutorial, I’ll present you ways you need to use ship personalised e mail pitches to your media contacts by Gmail and Google Sheets. You’ll be capable of schedule your press releases prematurely and likewise observe which influencers have seen your emails.
The massive benefit is that, not like different mass e mail applications, messages despatched by way of Mail merge are delivered similar to common emails straight within the Inbox.
Let’s get began:
Learn how to use Mail Merge with Gmail
Go to the Google Workspace Market and set up the Gmail Mail Merge add-on. You’ll have to grant sure permissions in order that the add-on can ship emails out of your Gmail accounts. It additionally wants permission to connect information out of your Google Drive.
Now that the add-on is put in, kind sheets.new in your browser to create a brand new Google Sheet. Contained in the sheet, go to the Extensions menu, select “Mail Merge with Attachments” after which choose the “Create Merge Template” menu.
Your sheet now has all of the important columns which might be required for operating mail merge however can add extra columns. We’ll add Location and Information Outlet columns as proven within the above screenshot.
The subsequent process is to get the media checklist into this Google Sheet. You’ll be able to both import teams from Google Contacts, out of your Mailchimp campaigns or, if you’re an Excel consumer, export as CSV and straight import the CSV file into Google Sheets.
Create an E-mail Template for Merge
Open your Gmail, create a brand new e mail message (see screenshot) and save the template in your drafts folder. The e-mail can have {{markers}} enclosed in double curly braces and these are changed with precise values from the Google Sheet in your outgoing emails.
After we enclose some textual content inside double curly braces, it turns into a marker and these are changed with values within the sheet. It’s also possible to add emojis within the topic and physique.
Subsequent, we are able to add some attachments to our e mail template. You’ll be able to both add information out of your laptop or you possibly can convey straight out of your Google Drive.
Configure and Run Mail Merge
Now that our e mail template in Gmail is prepared, return to your Google Sheet and select Configure mail merge from the Mail Merge menu underneath add-ons.menu.
Observe the step-by-step wizard to configure merge however there are a number of necessary issues you must know.
- You’ll be able to ship emails on behalf of any e mail deal with that’s related as an alias in your Gmail account. So an intern can ship emails on behalf of the supervisor whereas logged into her personal Google account.
- You’ll be able to add a CC or BCC email address and all of your merged emails will likely be copied to them as effectively. Do not forget that Gmail counts each CC or BCC recipient as a separate e mail and thus it counts in the direction of your daily email quota.
- Mail Merge consists of e mail monitoring so you possibly can know who opened your e mail or clicked the hyperlinks. For e mail newsletters, you possibly can even embody an unsubscribe possibility in your e mail messages.
After the configuration is completed, go to the Ship E-mail Part, choose the Ship a take a look at e mail possibility and hit the Go button.
Mail Merge will take the merge knowledge from the primary row within the Google Sheet and ship you a take a look at e mail. Yow will discover the take a look at e mail in your Gmail Despatched folder.
In case you are happy with the take a look at e mail, return to the Google Sheet, choose the Run Mail Merge possibility and hit Go to carry out a reside merge. That’s it.
The emails will likely be dispatched instantly and you’ll examine the Mail Merge Standing column within the sheet to trace the sending progress.
You’ll be able to add extra rows within the Google Sheet to ship the identical e mail to a different batch of individuals and once you hit ship, Mail Merge will mechanically ignore the rows which have already been despatched the e-mail.
Mail Merge – Suggestions and Methods
- You’ll be able to schedule emails – simply add a date and time within the Scheduled Date column and run merge once more to schedule the emails.
- If in case you have a number of rows within the sheet, you possibly can skip sending emails to specific rows by hiding these rows within the Google Sheet. Alternatively, chances are you’ll use filters in Google Sheets to solely present rows that match sure standards. Whenever you run merge once more, emails will likely be despatched to seen rows solely.
- When you want to cancel scheduled emails, you possibly can both empty the scheduled date column or you possibly can go to the Mail Merge menu, select Assist and click on the Cancel Scheduled Mail possibility.
- With Mail merge you may as well ship totally different attachments to totally different individuals. See how-to guide.
- It’s also possible to create drafts with Mail Merge and it is a useful possibility if you happen to want to evaluate the emails manually earlier than sending them to actual individuals.
