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Send individual – but duplicate – emails to multiple people with one easy process.

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2016, 2019/365.

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Quick reference

E-Mail Merge

Send individual – but duplicate – emails to multiple people with one easy process.

When to use

Outlook Email merge will send individual emails to an entire list of contacts. This eliminates the cc: line from becoming bogged down with names. It also protects your contact list from being “harvested” (copy and pasted) into some other recipient’s contact list.

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  [1]  and/or insert a .jpg photo of a pre-made flyer  [2].
  • 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.

Tip: Should all go wrong and emails are flying out to the wrong list (Yes, this happens because humans sometimes choose the wrong lists!), switch off your wireless on your laptop, or pull the Ethernet cord from your computer!

[1] www.GoSkills.com, Email Merge, Personalized, Lesson 7.02

[2] www.GoSkills.com, Email Merge, Full Color Flyers, Lesson 7.03

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  • 00:05 I want to show you the power of the Microsoft Outlook Mail Merge button
  • 00:08 right here.
  • 00:09 Let me tell you why we're doing this.
  • 00:11 I want to send multiple emails out to everyone on this list, but
  • 00:15 I don't want to sit there and address a single email to each one.
  • 00:18 I want an automated process, hence the mail merge.
  • 00:21 But let me go back to email real quick and hit a brand new email.
  • 00:26 Would you want to put 50 people on a Cc line and then possibly lose the integrity
  • 00:30 of your email list because you just sent out that information to everyone?
  • 00:34 What about the Bcc line?
  • 00:36 At some point your internet provider's going to blacklist you for doing that.
  • 00:40 So individual emails is the safest way to do this, plus then it's just more likely
  • 00:44 someone's going to open it if they know it's just to them and no one else.
  • 00:48 All right, back to contacts, the first step of course is to setup a list.
  • 00:52 Do you have a list ready to use for your email merge?
  • 00:56 I do, I've pre-done that.
  • 00:58 Now I'm going to go ahead and activate the Mail Merge button.
  • 01:01 When the mail merge opens up, it's going to ask me, basically taking me by the hand
  • 01:05 leading you through this process, just read everything.
  • 01:08 The main thing you're going to change is this final button where it says merged to
  • 01:13 a new document, a printer, email.
  • 01:15 Absolutely email is where we want to merge this to, and then it's going to ask us for
  • 01:19 our subject line, which I could leave blank.
  • 01:22 I will have one last chance to change that as we get further into this.
  • 01:26 All right, when I hit OK, my entire screen is going to change.
  • 01:29 Click OK, and welcome to Microsoft Word.
  • 01:33 You see Microsoft Word is the text editor for Outlook.
  • 01:37 Every time you type an email you've got the power of Microsoft Word behind you.
  • 01:41 So when we start a mail merge,
  • 01:43 we got the power of the Microsoft Word mailings ribbon behind us.
  • 01:47 So at this point I just have to fill an information onto the screen.
  • 01:52 So this will be my email, and
  • 01:54 I want to show off the Edit Recipient List button here.
  • 01:58 So when I click Edit Recipient List, check out that list.
  • 02:01 It happens to be the same list in my contact folder that I started with.
  • 02:05 I can uncheck any of these because there are doubles in here, so
  • 02:09 I can uncheck them.
  • 02:10 I can filter these down below if I want to filter by zip code or by city,
  • 02:15 anything like that.
  • 02:16 I'll go ahead and hit OK.
  • 02:18 Now the last bit is pretty much done.
  • 02:21 I'm going to hit the Finish & Merge but I really want you to see the background.
  • 02:27 Let me just very quickly click back into my email so
  • 02:29 you can see this background information and pull up my Microsoft Word.
  • 02:33 Okay, I want you to see my outbox while the Finish & Merge is happening I just
  • 02:38 kind of positioned it so you can watch it.
  • 02:40 Okay, Finish & Merge, here we go.
  • 02:42 Finish & Merge, do I want to edit each email, no.
  • 02:45 Do I want to print them, no.
  • 02:46 I absolutely want to send these scary word, right?
  • 02:49 Once you hit Send Email Messages you're committed.
  • 02:51 Well, you have one last chance to cancel this.
  • 02:54 So let's go ahead and click Send Email Messages.
  • 02:56 Yes to an Email, hit the drop down and read all these.
  • 03:00 Yes I want to send to their email address.
  • 03:02 That is my subject line, I can change it.
  • 03:05 Mail format and attachment plain text HTML, you can put attachments on these.
  • 03:10 All the records, yes.
  • 03:12 And now, one last time I'm going to hit OK.
  • 03:14 Now as soon as I hit OK, please dash your eyes right over here to the outbox,
  • 03:18 you're going to see something happen, a bunch of emails are going to land in here.
  • 03:22 Ready? OK, there they go, that's my entire list.
  • 03:27 Now they're sending, just that fast, they're sending out,
  • 03:30 that's why I moved that over so you could see that, very great.
  • 03:33 Now I'm going to jump over to my Sent Items, and
  • 03:36 there are all the emails that I just sent out.
  • 03:40 It happens that fast.
  • 03:40 So that means you have to be ready when the time comes.
  • 03:43 The last thing I want to show you is when we were in that mailings,
  • 03:47 let me go back to the mailings.
  • 03:49 When we're in mailings, we had an option here to Insert Merge Field.
  • 03:53 This is what the next video is about.
  • 03:54 Take the next video lesson, you're going to learn something very cool.
  • 03:58 Thank you.

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