Send Personalized Gmail Mail Merges for Free (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: In this video, I'll show you how to send personalized emails to lots of people in Gmail using a free add-on that I built. In just a few simple steps, you'll learn how to send standard mail merges, use custom subject lines, include attachments, add CC and BCC recipients, and more. Best of all, it's 100% free. I'm Kevin, and let's dive in. First, head to Gmail. On the right-hand side, open the side panel, and right over here, click on the plus icon to browse add-ons. At the top, search for Mail Merge by Kevin Stratford. That's my add-on. Right over here, click on Install. Here, sign into your Google account. I'll click on Continue. Then, you'll need to grant the required permissions. Right up on top, I'll click on Select All. And then down at the bottom, I'll click on Continue. And just like that, we've installed it. I'll click on Done. And then over here, let's close out of this window. You'll now see a new Mail Merge icon over on the right-hand sidebar. Let's click on that. This opens the Mail Merge sidebar. Right up on top, let's click on Open Mail Merge. This opens up the main interface. Let's start by creating an example spreadsheet. I'll click here. This opens a new Google Sheet. This spreadsheet contains all the personalized information that you want to insert into your emails. Let's walk through together. First, and this one is required, is the email column. This contains the recipients of your Mail Merge. You can enter one email address, or you can even enter in multiple email addresses. If you include multiple email addresses, you just have to make sure to separate them with commas. All the remaining columns that you see here are optional. If you don't need them, you can delete them, you can rename them, or you could even add more here at the end. Let's enter in some sample data to see how it works. Right over here, I'll enter in an email address, a first name, a last name, a company, and right over here, I could enter in a CC or a BCC email address. I'll leave those blank for now. Now, next to that is the attachment column. To attach a file, all you have to do is paste in a Google Drive file link. As an example, here I am in Google Drive, and I want to attach this PDF file to my Mail Merge. To do that, I'll right-click on this file, go down to Share, and right over here, you have the option to copy the link. I'll click on that. Now, let's go back to Google Sheets. Back within Google Sheets, let's paste the link into the attachment cell. Right up above, let's remove this sample data. Finally, right over here, you'll see a custom column. You could rename this to whatever you'd like. For example, I'll change this to Due Date, and then right down below, I'll enter in some sample dates. You can add as many additional columns as you need. With the spreadsheet ready now, let's head back to Mail Merge. Now that we've prepared the spreadsheet, let's select it in Mail Merge. Over here, click on Pick Sheet from Drive. Here, click on Allow Cookies. This opens the Google File Picker. Right here, I see my spreadsheet. I'll click on it and then select. Next, let's compose the email, starting right here with a subject. I'll type in Invoice 4, and then I want to insert the company name. So right up here, I'll click on the Company Merge field from the spreadsheet, and that inserts it here as a placeholder. Notice that each merge field corresponds to one of the columns in the spreadsheet. Below that, we can type in the email message. I'll type in my message, and I'd like to say hi, and then the person's first name. So I need to insert a merge field again. Right up on top, I'll click on the first name, and that inserts a tag. Here, it says your invoice is due on, and then I want to insert the due date. So up on here, I'll click on Due Date. Now, I'm not going to use the last name merge field, and that's okay. Now, before sending, let's preview the emails by clicking on Preview. The first time you do this, especially if you're including attachments, you'll need to authorize access. So right up on top, I'll click on Authorize. Here, let's click on Allow Cookies, and there I see my attachment. I'll click on Select. Here, you can preview each personalized email exactly as your recipients will see it. If you spot any issues, simply click on Back to Edit, and you can make changes. Now, I think everything looks good here, so I'll click on Send All. Up on top, let's click on OK to confirm sending the emails, and look at that. Three emails sent. Perfect. If I open my inbox, there's one of the personalized emails. Here, I have a custom subject. We also have all the personalized details, the message, and down below, we have the attachment. Nice. There you go. As you can see, sending personalized emails in Gmail is quick and easy. The add-on doesn't impose any sending limits, but Google does have daily sending limits itself. As of filming, you can send up to 500 mail merge emails per day with a personal Gmail account, and up to 1,500 per day with a Google Workspace account. If you have any feedback or ideas for new features, you could submit them directly in the app, or you could simply leave a comment right down below on this video. I'd love to hear from you. I hope you find this add-on useful. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.