How to send personalized emails with mail merge in Gmail

To start, draft the email that you want to send to your list of contacts. Write it as if you were writing to one person, not a whole list.

Once you're done, identify words and phrases you want to personalize for each contact. Not sure how to write your initial outreach email? You can reference one of these 6 proven cold email templates.

Here's an example email I drafted (words I wanted to personalize for each contact are highlighted in blue):

Hi Jon,

Thank you so much for being a reader of Art of Emails!

I wanted to personally invite you to a live workshop I'm hosting.

I'll be sharing line by line the psychology behind really good sales emails, so you can go on to write ones that consistently get opens and replies forVerizon.

The workshop happens next Thursday (August 8th) at 3PM your time (click here to save the date to your calendar)

There are only 100 spots so if you'd like to join, please reserve your seat ahead of time so I can save it for you: http://bit.ly/sales-webinar

I'll also be answering questions the last 20 mins of the workshop - really look forward to e-meeting you!

Again you can reserve your spot here: http://bit.ly/sales-webinar

Sapph

Turn each word or phrase you want to personalize for each contact into a unique reference to be personalized en masse later. Here are the unique references I used (highlighted in blue:

Hey First,

Thank you so much for being a reader of Art of Emails!

I wanted to personally invite you to a live workshop I'm hosting.

I'll be sharing line by line the psychology behind really good sales emails, so you can go on to write ones that consistently get opens and replies for Company .

The workshop happens next Thursday (August 8th) at Time your time (click here to save the date to your calendar)

There are only 100 spots so if you'd like to join, please reserve your seat ahead of time so I can save it for you: http://bit.ly/sales-webinar

I'll also be answering questions the last 20 mins of the workshop - really look forward to e-meeting you!

Again you can reserve your spot here: http://bit.ly/sales-webinar

- Sapph

Create a new Google Sheets with two columns to start. In the first column (Email address), add the email addresses of contacts you plan to email. In the second column (First name), add their first names.

For columns after First name, name each one the unique reference you used in your email template. For my example, that would be:

Write out the unique words or phrases you would like to personalize for each contact in their row:

Here's what my spreadsheet looked like:

A great mail merge tool is GMass for Gmail. You can send 50 emails for free per day. Beyond that, plans start at $8.95 per month.

After you install GMass, your inbox will look something like this. Click on the first red button beside the search bar to run GMass: Select the name of the spreadsheet you just worked on in step 2 and click on Connect to Spreadsheet: It'll open up a new email draft and add all of the contacts from your spreadsheet as email recipients (each contact will receive your message as an 1-on-1 email): Paste the email you worked on in step 1 into the email draft window:

To have GMass mail merge personalized words or phrases for each contact, highlight the first unique reference in your email draft, delete it and press the red arrow button at the bottom of the email draft window.

In my example, I started with First (first name of contact):

Click the button with the name of the spreadsheet column you want to pull the personalized content from for this unique reference:

In my example, it replaced First with {First Name}. After you repeat this process for all of your unique references, your email will look something like this:

To mass send your email with words and phrases personalized for each contact, click on the red GMass button instead of Send. Note: due to Gmail limits, you can email up to 500 contacts at a time if you have a personal Gmail account and 2000 if you have a paid G Suite account: GMass sends a personalized 1-on-1 email to every contact from your spreadsheet: Here's how the personalized email looks like for each individual contact:

After a few hours, click on the Opens label under GMass Reports in the left hand sidebar of Gmail to see who opened your email:

Don't be discouraged if you don't get a response to your first email! According to a Yesware 2014 study, you can still get a response as far along as the 7th and 8th follow up email:

For the subject line of your follow up email, you can describe the biggest benefit of your product or service in an interesting way.

For example, let's say that you're prospecting for Slack. Some interesting follow up subject lines:

• Before you drop a bomb on your inbox because you're up to 2588 unread emails
• Nobody wins at ping pong email :(

For the message of your follow up email, you can mention:

• A recent customer success story
• A recent event that happened related to your product

Example: Let's say your product is email protection software. You could mention a Slack employee recently fell for a phishing scam, revealing the salary information of many colleagues.

Here's an example follow up email I wrote (I replaced each word and phrase I wanted to personalize for each contact with an unique reference):

Hey First,

Wondering if you received the invite to my live workshop? It happens tomorrow at Time.

I'll be going over some can't-find-anywhere-else protips about how to 2-3x your cold email response rates. While doing way less manual work to set everything up.

There are only a few seats left - save yours here: http://bit.ly/sales-webinar

Look forward to e-meeting you!

- Sapph

In Gmail, click on the @ red button beside the search bar to open GMass' follow up feature: Select the subject line of the first mass email you sent: Choose which contacts you want to send a follow up email to based on how they interacted with your first email and click on Compose Follow-Up. I selected the interaction behavior 'Opened but didn't click': GMass will add contacts who match this criteria as follow up email recipients. Paste your follow up email into the email draft window: Highlight the first unique reference in your email: Click on the button with the name of the spreadsheet column you want GMass to pull the personalized word or phrase from: Repeat this process for every unique reference and your follow up email will look something like this: Click the GMass red button to send your personalized follow up email to your contacts After a few hours, click on the Opens label under GMass Reports in the left hand sidebar of Gmail to see who opened your follow up email: And there you have it, the ABCs to mail merge email personalization! Mail merge isn't only useful for sales prospecting. It's also a time saver for:

• Personalized holiday greetings to family and friends
• Event invites
• Outreach to influencers for social sharing and (link building)

As the cliche goes, work smarter, not harder. ✌