In this blog, I’ll go over how to use Gmail and Google Sheets to send personalized emails in bulk. I’ll then leave you with three realistic situations where you might want to apply this new technique immediately. Let’s get started. Website audit services actually first used this mail merge method back when I was an account manager in the sales team and covering more than 200 clients per 1/4.

Send A Mass Communication To All My Clients

Sometimes I would need to send a mass communication to all my clients and at first, I used to use the BCC method, where you add your own email in the to field and all the actual recipients in the BCC field so they don’t see each other’s email addresses. But I thought there must be a less generic and more efficient way to do this and that’s where Google’s very own mail merge script comes in.

Huge Thanks To Martin Hawksey

Huge thanks to Martin Hawksey for building this and helping me receive some extra recognition at work. All right, step one, go to this Google workspace for developers webpage. I’ll link it down below and scroll down to the try it section and click create a copy of sample spreadsheet. Confirm you want to make a copy and you’ll see this sample mail merge spreadsheet appear.

By the way, mail merge is the technical name for sending customized bulk emails. So if you want to sound smart at work, use that phrase. Right off the bat, you can change any of these column headers, except for these two that I’ll highlight in a different color. Recipient column, email sent column. Recipient is where you input the email addresses and email sent, has a confirmation pop up when the email has been successfully sent.

My Client’s First Name, Their Last Name

In my first sales example, on my client’s first name, their last name, their email addresses, their industry verticals and their unique customer ID, CID. With all this filled out, I can go to my Gmail and compose a new draft. In the to field, I can start by typing two open curly brackets, go back to my mail merge sheet, copy the recipient header cell to ensure no typo can possibly occur and paste that back here and close this with two more curly brackets.

Subject Line Of The Email

I wanna tell them we have research reports for their specific industries. So I have read top vertical trends of 22nd century but the word vertical is enclosed within curly brackets because my clients are in different verticals. In the body of the email, you can see I have their first name in curly brackets there. Vertical in curly brackets and their customer ID, CID, in curly brackets to prove that this is a legit email from their account manager and not spam or something, right? And now we’re ready to go back to the mail merge sheet to start sending the emails.

Click mail merge here, click send emails, you’ll see need to provide authorization, press continue, choose your Google account. And although this says, Google hasn’t verified this app, we got the script from the official Google developer website, right? And more importantly, I’m a YouTuber, you can trust me. No but seriously, this is fine. So click advanced, go down and go to, go to Gmail/Sheets mail merge, which is safe and then you click allow.

Ability To Click Mail Merge Again

You should have the ability to click mail merge again. But before we do that, go back to your Gmail draft, copy the subject line Command or Control + C, go back to the mail merge sheet, click mail merge, send emails, and this time Command or Control + V, paste the subject line like exactly as you have it here and press okay. And in a few seconds, you’ll see the email sent or we’ll hopefully see the email sent column populate with a date and time the email has been sent.

Hopefully, you decided to test this with your own email first, so you can go back to your inbox and confirm the mail merge has run successfully. In my case, the vertical for me is fashion, which is correct. I am also very fashionable and my name is correct here. And my customer ID, CID, is correct also. Now, without reading the next part of this blog, let me know down in the comments how you might use this tool and we’ll see if my examples cover your use case.

No Cheating

Second example, you’re in school and you’re organizing events for your fellow classmates. You have their first name, last name, their email address, the date of their specific event and their unique ID or UID. Pro-tip, I created a dynamic UID here by using a combination of the left and and functions. This is basically just taking the left two characters from their email address and combining that with their event date and number format to create an ID, you know, specific to them to use when they check in or something.

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It’s important to note that this dynamic output works with the mail merge function as well. The email could look something like this, the recipient in to field doesn’t change. Title; Hi, first name, you’re confirmed for tryouts. Hi, first name, last name, please join us on this date for tryouts and you can check in with your unique ID, UID seen here. Simple and elegant.

This Last Example Is For Professional Suck-Ups

I’ve never done this, I’ve heard of people doing this. I’m just including it here for the sake of being comprehensive, no judgment. And this is where you get to send, you know, personalized holiday greeting emails to colleagues, managers, directors, people who can give you a promotion and a raise. You have their first name, last name, email, team they’re currently on, and the years you’ve known them for. And in the email: Hi, first name, I can’t believe it’s been these many years since we’ve met. I miss working with you so much.

Your Team Was The Best

Anyways, happy holidays, you’re my favorite colleague ever. Jokes aside, here’s some last pro tips if you want to use this free mail merge tool. First, make sure to highlight the two columns you can’t delete in another color like I did in this tutorial. So you can remind yourself to be extra careful with the recipient and email sent columns. Second, whenever you want to rerun the script, clear out the email sent column by deleting the cell contents like this. I’m not sure whether this is completely necessary but it’s better safe than sorry.

Finally, always remember to send a test email first to yourself before sending the final copy to others. Common mistakes I’ve seen include, using one curly bracket instead of two. Second, not copy pasting the column header exactly. And third, not giving this blog a like if you found it helpful.