Using Mail Merge in Email Marketing

The world of marketing requires that you handle several tasks rather than focusing on one. Send newsletters or marketing news in one go!  For email marketing campaigns, use mail merge, where you can send emails in bulk without sacrificing the personalization that’ll help your audience understand the human element of your company.

We’ve already covered email marketing expert tips. Now, we’re here to discuss more on mail merge!

Mail merge greatly assists in marketing.

Email merge is a function of an email provider which automates the sending of emails. It can significantly assist mail marketing as one can personalize emails according to the sender’s needs by inputting information in the required fields. Then, the provider will automatically send emails to as many recipients as the mailing list contains.

The Mail Merge feature is available on most email providers, such as Google. 

Benefits of mail merge for email marketing include:

It helps to create personalized emails.

Email providers, or clients, easily allow you to upload a mailing list containing details of multiple recipients. Not only does the provider involve emails, but sometimes they also include additional information. So, you can have information such as the business’ name, address, and so on in the mail merge.

Mail merge makes it look like you’re not two-timing.

Also, email merge ensures that one recipient doesn’t see that you’ve sent the email to several other recipients. When the receiver sees that they’re the only recipient listed, the marketing email feels more special. Sometimes, when you see that you’re part of a massive list of recipients, you feel as though you are only one of an uninterested company’s possible customers. 

It allows you to make your emails special.

In addition, even if you’re the email’s only listed receiver, it can sometimes be disheartening. Of course, you can always send a generic email to anyone at all. However, people enjoy it when a business acknowledges them personally. Personalizing the email on both these fronts can help you achieve maximum opens. After all, people like it when a company cares about them. Businesses hearing out their consumers’ needs, wants, and requests can earn goodwill. 

Mail merge needs only a couple of details to get going.

A generic, impersonal email can seem unprofessional. When you start an email merge for an email marketing campaign, your primary requirements are the email address and the recipient’s name. You don’t have to switch around the email content every few names or so. Instead, you just change the parts containing essential information.

Mail merge, combined with timing your emails well, will be the key to bringing all your potential clients to the yard.

Side note: Don’t spam, or else your email campaign will take a hit!

Spam, or rather, Sneaky, Perilous, and Annoying Messages, are messages that, for one reason or another, ruin your email experience. Spam may do several things. First, clogging up your virtual mailbox is one of the most harmless things it can do. However, this can lead to obscuring the emails that matter to you. Also, should you have a large volume of emails, it can slow down your internet. At worst, spam might even steal personal information! 

However, one of the worst things spam can do for email marketing is hurt the company’s reputation by making it seem like they don’t have anything better to do than harass people. Send too many emails, and you might end up getting blacklisted.

As an email marketer, part of using mail merge right is avoiding the blacklist. So, just because you can send more personalized emails than ever before does not mean you should. Getting blacklisted not only makes you look bad but also hinders your email delivery, as email service providers won’t accept the emails from your IP or domain. 

Even though you’re taking all the steps to make your email marketing campaign foolproof, you can’t get a 100% open rate. Even if you use mail merge, utilize email marketing tools, or create the perfect subject for email marketing, you can’t win ‘em all. However, you can still make all of these email marketing campaign tools and features work for you!

How to do a Mail Merge

Before you can do an email merge of your own, you need to prepare the email. Also, you need a chosen email provider which can support the merge function. We’ll use Google for this tutorial.

So, start by opening up Google Spreadsheets. This is where you can generate your mailing list! A mailing list is a list of names and email addresses that marketers use to keep track of all their customers. The great thing about a mailing list is that you can create it before or during the merge!

Step 1: The Mailing List

First, click on Add-Ons. Then, a dropdown box will open up. Click on Mail Merge, then Start. After that, a popup for Mail Merge will appear, containing fields for the required information. Also, you’ll see that the Fsheet generated columns for the recipients’ names and email addresses. Then, you’ll also see a row where you can check the approximate time Google sent the emails.

Step 2: Adding people to the Mailing List. 

Once the popup loads, you can see several fields to add to the information attached to the email. The most important of these are the Name and Email address on the spreadsheet. On the popup box, select an account to send the email from. Also, specify how you want your name to be displayed. After that, you choose the recipients of the email addresses. In addition, your mailing list should always have email addresses. Without an address, you can’t send the mail. Then, you write the subject of the email! Another perk of mail merge is that you can edit your mailing list on the fly! 

Step 3: Input the email proper.

The Body Template section is where you type or copy-paste in your email. So, type in your Template Name. As for the email itself, you can either copy and paste an existing email template or type one in the field. Once the email’s ready, click Save at the bottom of the popup! You’ll see the changes reflect on the Template Name field of the initial Mail Merge popup box.

Step 4: Final checks

You’re almost done! Before you merge your emails, give the fields a quick once-over. As the sender, it’s your last chance to eliminate typos, misspelled words, or phrases that you think are weird at a second glance. Also, make sure your names and email addresses are correct! Take care to avoid the business faux pas of getting a potential customer’s name wrong, as well as the technical mistake of misspelling an email address, so it doesn’t bounce and return to you. So, once done, click on Merge Emails! Google will then tell you how many emails you’re about to send and ask if you wish to continue with the action. Then, you click ‘Yes.’

Once Google finishes sending the emails out, another popup will give you the number of emails you’ve successfully merged. If you close the mail merge popup, you can see that the spreadsheet contains the exact date and time the emails were sent under Filter Rows to Merge. And that’s how you do a mail merge on Google!

Using mail merge in email marketing is a must!

Marketing has become more digital, and no field is as effective for conversions as email. Therefore, email marketing campaigns should reach out to as many potential customers as possible.

However, email marketers shouldn’t just send emails in bulk at all times. Doing this will guarantee you will get on a blacklist. Instead, one must take into account timing, personalization, and information. Mail merge will help you with all these factors without sacrificing time. Instead of that, email merge will save time!

But when doing digital marketing, it’s not feasible to send a personalized email one by one. Additionally, you don’t want to send one email to multiple people in such a way where the recipients can see each other in the recipient line. 

So, if you use mail merge, you can send personalized emails in bulk in one go! Alternatively, you can hire Email Marketing Experts to do the mail merge for you.

About Axel May Rivera

Axel is an avid fan of many dramas and songs. She is always eager to explore and discover more when it comes to movies and entertainment, especially in Korean and Filipino culture. In her free time, she enjoys reading books and playing badminton.