Sending mass mail with personal and friendlier touch is quite a tedious job as you need to change some of the variables in the mail content. For example, you’re hosting a birthday party and need to send out invitations but you do not want your mail invitation to sound like it’s a spam or you want to personally address the person using their name in your invitation. In order to do so, you need to send one mail at one time since you need to change the variables.
This is where Mozilla Thunderbird and a little add-on of it – Mail Merge, excels at its best. With this two tool you don’t have to keep on changing the variables. Just create a spreadsheet and draft a mail, and let this two tools do the hardwork for you.
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Install mail merge
First thing you have to do is to download Mozilla Thunderbird. After installation, launch Thunderbird and it will ask for your email account. You can create a new one or use an exisiting account of yours.
Now, to install the add ons – Mail Merge. On the upper right side, you can see a "list" icon. Click on it and then click on add-ons.
On the add-ons manager page, search for Mail Merge. Click install and restart Thunderbird for the add-on to work.
1. Create a CSV file
The first thing that need to be done before you can send out your mails is to create a CSV file. To create a CSV file you can use any spreadsheet tool, if you have Microsoft Excel, you can use that.The first row of the spreadsheet is used to enter the variables you want to use, for example – first name, last name, mail and etc. After you’re done, save the spreadsheet in CSV format.
2. Drafting Personalized Mail
Click on File > New Message > Message or press Ctrl + NEnter the variables at places that you want the values to appear. Each variable should be enclosed using the double curly braces, for example {{FIRST NAME}}. Enter variable exactly the same as in the CSV file, this includes spelling, spacing and capitalization.
After you’re done with message creation, click on File > Mail Merge. Set Source > CSV , Deliver Mode > Send Later and Format > Both.
Under CSV section, for File, click on browse to locate the CSV file (spreadsheet) you did earlier. After you’re done click "OK".
After clicking "OK", your mail and CSV file will merge. Earlier, we set "Deliver Mode" to send later, so the mails can be found in Local Folders > Outbox. Click on the mail and you’ll notice that your variables has been replaced with the values in your CSV file.
To send out the mails, click on the "list" icon on the upper right, File > Send Unsent Messages.
And voila! you’re done. With this trick you can stop worrying about sounding automated when sending mass mail and sending personalized mail is no longer a tedious task.
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