Mass Customized E-mail
By Dave Paradi

Would you like to be able to send a customized e-mail to a list of people without having to invest money and time in new software? If you have Microsoft Word and Outlook, you have all the tools you need. Many people are familiar with the mail merge feature of Word, used to create form letters or mailing labels. What many people don’t realize is that this same feature can be used to create a set of customized e-mail messages. In this article, I will walk you through the steps required to set up the e-mail list, the master message and then to create and send the e-mails. In this article I refer to Outlook as the e-mail program, but other e-mail programs may also work with this technique.

Setting Up the E-mail List
When you set up your list of people you want to send the e-mails to, the two easiest ways to set it up are to do it as a table in Word or as a spreadsheet in Excel. In either program, it is important to set up the first row as the field names. Usually you will have one field for the person’s name, one for the name of their organization and you must have one for the e-mail address. Here is an example of what a list may look like.

After you have created the source data file, save it on your computer.

Setting Up the Master E-Mail Message
The master e-mail message is set up in Word. Start a new document. Click on the Tools menu item and click on the Mail Merge… menu item. This will display the Mail Merge dialog box. Click on the Create button in the top part of the dialog box and select Form Letters… as shown below.

The system will usually ask if you want to use the active window or create a new main document. You should be able to use the active window since it is already a new document.

Next you need to select the data file that you created earlier. Click the Get data button in the Data Source section in the middle of the dialog box. Select the Open Data Source… option and then you can select the file that you created in the previous step. If you are using an Excel file, it will ask if you want to use the Entire Worksheet, and usually you will select that you want to use the Entire Worksheet. The system will then tell you that your main document does not have any merge fields and you can click on the button it displays to Edit the Main Document.

In your document, you can then add the fields from the source file and other text to create your message. To add a field from the source data file, drop down the Insert Merge Field button which is in the Merge toolbar that should now be displayed when editing the main document (it is usually the second toolbar). Here is what the Merge toolbar looks like.

Since Word 2000 can only produce plain text e-mails from the merge, you will have to pay attention to your message and make sure it still looks good. To simulate what the e-mails will really look like, I usually set the font to be Courier. Here is an example of what the main document may look like when using the example source data shown above.

«First_Name»,

It was a pleasure to have you recently attend our customer education event. I trust that at «Company», you have found the training to be useful and that it will enhance our relationship in the future.

Sincerely,

Doug Smith, General Manager

Creating the Merged E-mails
Once the main document is set up, it comes time to create the customized e-mails. I find it useful to disconnect my computer from the Internet before proceeding with this step. This ensures that if there is a problem creating the e-mails, that the ones that are created at the start are not sent until quality checks can be done.

Click on the Tools menu and click on Mail Merge… to redisplay the Mail Merge Helper dialog box. In the Mail Merge Helper dialog box, click on the Merge… button in the lower part of the dialog box. You will then see the Merge dialog box. In the Merge to: field, drop down the pick list and select Electronic mail, as shown below.

Then click on the Setup… button beside the Merge to: field. This displays the Merge To Setup dialog box. In the Data field with Mail/Fax address drop down list, select the field in the data source that contains the e-mail address. Then enter the subject of the e-mail in the Mail message subject line field. Click OK to return to the Merge dialog box.

When you click on the Merge button, the system will automatically generate an e-mail for each person on the list. If you want to restrict the e-mails to only certain people, you can click on the Query Options… button and set up selection criteria for who will get the e-mail. If you have e-mail security software, as Outlook in the most recent releases does, it will ask you to confirm each e-mail that is created because of system restrictions that help prevent viruses from using the Outlook e-mail features.

Sending the E-mails
After all the e-mails have been created, I suggest you go to the Outbox in Outlook and check a few of the e-mails to make sure they look the way you wanted them to. When they look fine, reconnect to the Internet and send the e-mails. If you are sending more than 35 e-mails at a time, check with your Internet Service Provider to see what the maximum number of e-mails you can send at one time is. I have had one of my ISP’s disconnect my account over this. They can’t tell if you are sending spam or not, so they just shut you down.

File Attachment Restrictions
One feature that this e-mail merge does not have is the ability to automatically attach a file to the customized e-mails as they are generated. To include file attachments, you can proceed one of two ways. The first option is to open each e-mail in your Outbox and manually attach the files. This will work if you have about 75 or less to do. For larger numbers of e-mails, the second option is to include a link to the file on your web site in the body of the e-mail. Then people can access the file through their web browser.

Using two tools that you already have on your desktop, you can produce mass customized e-mails that can help build your business and service your customers.

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© MMIII Dave Paradi

Dave Paradi’s Think Outside the Slide™ approach helps presenters get results by showing them how to quickly create effective PowerPoint presentations. He is the co-author of “Guide to PowerPoint”, part of the Prentice Hall Series in Advanced Business Communication. He offers a free PowerPoint e-course, newsletter and articles on his web site at www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.