e-mail mailmerge
Mail Merging without the Spam
Don't risk losing valuable contacts - learn the secrets of successful mail merging.
A successful mail merge allows you to send messages to a large number of your personal contacts in Outlook and most importantly without them knowing who else you have sent it to. It’s a fast and efficient way of getting your message across but you do need to be aware of the pitfalls so you don’t become a ‘spammer!’
There is more than one way to do a mail merge and to make it easy for you there are various tools available to help you. Here we aim to give you an overview of the most common method available so that you too can successfully mail merge to your contacts. Our example below is for mail merging via email however you can also mail merge to a document or to your printer too.
How to create a Mail Merge from Outlook
1. Select the Contacts folder containing the contacts that you want to send an email to.
2. Select the contacts that you want to email to by sorting your Contacts to email into their own Category i.e. you might sort them all into Current Clients. Then open just those contacts by searching for Current Clients.
3. Open the Mail Merge dialog in Outlook via Tools-> Mail Merge…
4. Verify if the correct options are set for contacts;
o "All contacts in current view" if you filtered your view into a Category so that only the contacts that you want to address are visible.
o Or "Only selected contacts" if you want to manually select the contacts from the Contacts folder that you want to address.
5. At the bottom of the box set the "Merge options" to;
o Document Type: Form Letters
o Merge to: E-mail
o Message subject line: <whatever you want as a subject for your message> (you can modify this later too)
Your screen should now look something like this.
6. Press OK and Word will open with a new blank page.
If you are using Word 2007 then it will automatically open to the Mailings tab on the Ribbon.
If you are using a previous version of Word then the Mail Merge toolbar will show up automatically.
The Mail Merge tab in the Ribbon of Word 2007.
The Mail Merge toolbar in Word 2003.
8. Now it is time to start writing your message as below:
1. Insert a greeting line;
Word 2007: press the Greeting Line button.
Word 2003: press the 5th icon from the left (labeled Greeting Line) on the Mail Merge toolbar shown above.
2. Select the greeting line that you want and which greeting line to use when no proper information is found from the contact information.
You can type what you want here so instead of selecting "Dear " you could type "Hello ".
Please be aware that you need to type a space at the end of the word in order not to have it "stick" to the name of the addressee.
3. Press OK to close the dialog and then press ENTER to start a new line in the document.
4. Here type the following;
Please verify your contact details that we have on file and either confirm it to us or provide us updated information.
5. Press ENTER again to start a new line and insert the address;
Word 2007: press the Address Block button.
Word 2003: press the 4th icon from the left (labeled Address Block) on the Mail Merge toolbar shown above.
6. As we’ve already addressed the person we remove their name from the address block by disabling the option "Insert recipient’s name in this format:"
As we only address individuals in our example we also disable the option "Insert company name".
7. Press OK to close the dialog and press ENTER to start a new line.
8. Now we’re going to include the home telephone number;
Word 2007: press the Insert Merge Field button.
Word 2003: press the 6th icon from the left (labeled Insert Merge Fields) on the Mail Merge toolbar shown above.
9. From the dialog that pops up select, Address Fields and then scroll down to Home Phone and then press Insert.
10. Press Close to close the dialog and press ENTER to start another new line.
11. Now type the following;
Thanks in advance and best regards, <your name here>
Your page should now look something like this.
7. Before sending, it is best to preview your results first;
Word 2007: press the Preview Results button.
Word 2003: press the 8th icon from the left (labeled View Merged Data) on the Mail Merge toolbar shown above.
8. You can use the arrow buttons in the toolbar to browse through all the personalized emails.
9. Now it is time to send the messages;
Word 2007: Press the Finish & Merge button and select "Send E-mail Messages…"
Word 2003: Press the second button from the right (labeled Merge to E-mail) on the Mail Merge toolbar shown above.
10. A new dialog will now pop-up. As we had already set the subject and selected all the correct contacts we don’t need to change anything in this dialog. Click OK to complete the merge.
Pressing OK will directly start sending the emails.
It’s probably best to have a test first by setting up an example category with two or three contacts in for you to mail merge to and then you can include your own email address to see what comes through. Once you’re confident you can set up your categories and get sending!
We’d be happy to show you how successful mail merging could aid your business, contact us now for a free demonstration or indeed any advice on your IT systems and networks, call us on 01394 387337 or email React Computer Partnership