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Send one email message to multiple contacts without using the cc or bcc lines. Each contact will receive their own copy of your message.

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7.06 mass-email-merge-to-contact-lists - Exercise.docx
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Quick reference

Mass Email Merge to Contact lists

Send individual, identical, yet personalized emails to multiple contacts with one easy process.

When to use

Outlook email merge will personalize individual emails but allow you to send to an entire contact list. Market research shows that an email is 80% more likely to be opened when it contains the recipient’s name in the first line.

Instructions

  • Start with Outlook.
  • Click Contacts, and select the folder with the contacts to use in the email merge.
  • On the Home ribbon, click Mail Merge.

  • At the bottom of this box, change Merge to: E-mail and enter a subject line. 

Note: you will have a chance later to change or modify the subject line

  • If your list contains contact groups, the process will warn you that those will not be included in the merge. Click OK.

  • MS Word will open in the background, type your email message, personalize the fields, and/or Insert a .jpg photo of a pre-made flyer.
Personalize the email message
  • Click into the greeting line of the message, i.e.: Hello ____________
  • On the Mailings ribbon, click Insert Merge Field.

 

  • Locate and select the field First_Name, and click Insert

  • The greeting line will look like this:
    (You will have to type the comma at the end of the greeting line.)

  • The grey area is the field code and the chevrons (arrows) on the sides should not be deleted or the code will break.
  • Take a moment to preview the emails.
           
  • Click Finish & Merge on the Mailings ribbon, and then Send Email Messages.​​​​​​

  • You have one last chance to change the Subject line and/or cancel the process.

  • Click OK and the emails will immediately send out.
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  • 00:04 We're going to start adding contacts into a mass email merge to a pre-made list
  • 00:09 email merge lists that I've already compiled of a set of contacts.
  • 00:13 So instead of putting all these people on the two line where everyone will see their
  • 00:18 email address.
  • 00:19 Instead of putting them on the BCC line because if you have over 50 on a BCC,
  • 00:23 your internet provider might blacklist you.
  • 00:26 Instead of all of that, I'm going to send individual identical emails,
  • 00:30 personalized to each one of these.
  • 00:32 Here's how to do it.
  • 00:33 I'm on my contacts, and in the middle of the ribbon,
  • 00:36 the home ribbon is a button that says Mail Merge.
  • 00:38 I'll go ahead and click that.
  • 00:40 And here we have begun the mail merge.
  • 00:42 I'm going to leave everything up on top the same, but way at the bottom,
  • 00:46 there's a merge to what type of document?
  • 00:48 New document, printer, or email.
  • 00:51 Now I'm going to type the email subject line,
  • 00:53 but I do have a chance to change that.
  • 00:55 Hitting OK and Microsoft Word opens.
  • 00:58 Now Microsoft Word is the text editor for Outlook and
  • 01:02 can let me edit my recipient list.
  • 01:05 See because I started with Outlook, I just linked the process to Word.
  • 01:10 So check this out.
  • 01:11 I'm going to click Edit Recipient List, and
  • 01:13 there is the list that I started with in Outlook.
  • 01:16 Now I can uncheck any of these I want,
  • 01:18 I can maybe filter the them down to a zip code or a state.
  • 01:22 I'll go ahead and click OK.
  • 01:25 Now it's waiting for me to type my message.
  • 01:29 So I've put in my message with a greeting line, a hyperlink, and a picture.
  • 01:36 Here's what I want to do to personalize this.
  • 01:38 On the hello greeting line, I'm going to wipe out this line and the comma,
  • 01:41 I'm just going to wipe that out.
  • 01:43 And on the mailings ribbon of Microsoft Word,
  • 01:46 we have an Insert Merge Field right here.
  • 01:49 When I click that button, I can actually type my way to the word first name.
  • 01:54 Now you need to know that there's a 100 fields in here,
  • 01:57 I just want to pull the first name from From that contact list.
  • 02:00 I'm going to click Insert and close this.
  • 02:04 Notice the chevrons beside and around the first name, if you wipe out those
  • 02:08 chevrons, you'll break the code and every email will say, hello, first name.
  • 02:12 No, no, no, we want those chevrons, those little double arrows around that code.
  • 02:16 I'm going to type a comma,
  • 02:18 Outlook does not assume assume your punctuation, you have to type it in.
  • 02:23 At this point, before I hit Send, I want to make sure they look right.
  • 02:26 So on the mailings ribbon, I have her preview results, I click that and
  • 02:30 notice the first name, Hello Al.
  • 02:32 I'll hit the right arrow so you can see them, toggle through, they look great.
  • 02:36 I'm going to turn off that preview list.
  • 02:39 Now, before Before I hit Finish and Merge, I'm going to slide this screen over.
  • 02:42 I have Outlook in the background, and I want you to keep an eye on my email.
  • 02:46 So click on my email, I have my inbox sent an outbox right here.
  • 02:52 Back to my designed email with a field, I'm going to hit the Finish and Merge.
  • 02:57 Send mail messages, don't panic out, I have one last chance to cancel this.
  • 03:03 To an email, subject line here's where I can change my subject line one last time,
  • 03:07 and I'm going to hit OK.
  • 03:08 Now when I click this,
  • 03:10 your eyeball is on the out box on the left-hand side of the screen, ready, go.
  • 03:15 There they go.
  • 03:16 And now they're sending because the count is going down.
  • 03:21 Okay, now they're done.
  • 03:22 I'll minimize this, click on my Sent Mail,
  • 03:25 the personalized email merge just sent on my screen.
  • 03:29 It's that fast and that efficient.
  • 03:32 So it doesn't matter if you're sending just a few or a couple of hundred,
  • 03:36 it'll happen automatically and save you a ton of time.
  • 03:39 It's a great process known as the mail merge,
  • 03:42 you can only find it on the contacts on the Mail Merge button.

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