- Hey friends. In this video,
I'll go over how to use Gmail and Google Sheets
to send personalized emails in bulk.
I'll then leave you with three realistic situations
where you might want to apply
this new technique immediately.
Let's get started.
Hi everyone, my name is Jeff
and welcome back to another episode of Think Outside the Box
where I show you creative ways to stand out at work.
I actually first used this mail merge method
back when I was an account manager in the sales team
and covering more than 200 clients per 1/4.
Sometimes I would need to send a mass communication
to all my clients and at first,
I used to use the BCC method,
where you add your own email in the to field
and all the actual recipients in the BCC field
so they don't see each other's email addresses.
But I thought there must be a less generic
and more efficient way to do this
and that's where Google's very own
mail merge script comes in.
Huge thanks to Martin Hawksey for building this
and helping me receive some extra recognition at work.
All right, step one,
go to this Google workspace for developers webpage.
I'll link it down below
and scroll down to the try it section
and click create a copy of sample spreadsheet.
Confirm you want to make a copy
and you'll see this sample mail merge spreadsheet appear.
By the way, mail merge is the technical name
for sending customized bulk emails.
So if you want to sound smart at work, use that phrase.
Right off the bat,
you can change any of these column headers,
except for these two
that I'll highlight in a different color.
Recipient column, email sent column.
Recipient is where you input the email addresses
and email sent, has a confirmation pop up
when the email has been successfully sent.
In my first sales example, on my client's first name,
their last name, their email addresses,
their industry verticals and their unique customer ID, CID.
With all this filled out,
I can go to my Gmail and compose a new draft.
In the to field,
I can start by typing two open curly brackets,
go back to my mail merge sheet,
copy the recipient header cell
to ensure no typo can possibly occur
and paste that back here
and close this with two more curly brackets.
For the subject line of the email,
I wanna tell them we have research reports
for their specific industries.
So I have read top vertical trends of 22nd century
but the word vertical is enclosed within curly brackets
because my clients are in different verticals.
In the body of the email,
you can see I have their first name in curly brackets there.
Vertical in curly brackets
and their customer ID, CID, in curly brackets
to prove that this is a legit email
from their account manager and not spam or something, right?
And now we're ready to go back to the mail merge sheet
to start sending the emails.
So click mail merge here, click send emails,
you'll see need to provide authorization, press continue,
choose your Google account.
And although this says, Google hasn't verified this app,
we got the script
from the official Google developer website, right?
And more importantly,
I'm a YouTuber, you can trust me.
No but seriously, this is fine.
So click advanced,
go down and go to, go to Gmail/Sheets mail merge,
which is safe and then you click allow.
And now you should have the ability
to click mail merge again.
But before we do that, go back to your Gmail draft,
copy the subject line Command or Control + C,
go back to the mail merge sheet, click mail merge,
send emails, and this time Command or Control + V,
paste the subject line like exactly as you have it here
and press okay.
And in a few seconds,
you'll see the email sent
or we'll hopefully see the email sent column populate
with a date and time the email has been sent.
Hopefully, you decided to test this
with your own email first,
so you can go back to your inbox
and confirm the mail merge has run successfully.
In my case,
the vertical for me is fashion, which is correct.
I am also very fashionable and my name is correct here.
And my customer ID, CID, is correct also.
Now, without watching the next part of this video,
let me know down in the comments
how you might use this tool
and we'll see if my examples cover your use case.
All right? No cheating.
Okay. Second example, you're in school
and you're organizing events for your fellow classmates.
You have their first name, last name, their email address,
the date of their specific event and their unique ID or UID.
Pro-tip, I created a dynamic UID here
by using a combination of the left and and functions.
This is basically just taking the left two characters
from their email address and combining that
with their event date and number format
to create an ID, you know, specific to them
to use when they check in or something.
And it's important to note that this dynamic output
works with the mail merge function as well.
The email could look something like this,
the recipient in the to field doesn't change.
Title; Hi, first name, you're confirmed for tryouts.
Hi, first name, last name,
please join us on this date for tryouts
and you can check in with your unique ID, UID seen here.
Simple and elegant.
All right, this last example is for professional suck-ups.
(Jeff chuckles) I've never done this,
I've heard of people doing this.
I'm just including it here
for the sake of being comprehensive, no judgment.
And this is where you get to send,
you know, personalized holiday greeting emails
to colleagues, managers, directors,
people who can give you a promotion and a raise.
You have their first name, last name, email,
team they're currently on,
and the years you've known them for.
And in the email: Hi, first name,
I can't believe it's been these many years since we've met.
I miss working with you so much.
Your team was the best.
Anyways, happy holidays, you're my favorite colleague ever.
Jokes aside, here's some last pro tips
if you want to use this free mail merge tool.
First, make sure to highlight the two columns
you can't delete in another color
like I did in this tutorial.
So you can remind yourself to be extra careful
with the recipient and email sent columns.
Second, whenever you want to rerun the script,
clear out the email sent column
by deleting the cell contents like this.
I'm not sure whether this is completely necessary
but it's better safe than sorry.
Finally,
always remember to send a test email first to yourself
before sending the final copy to others.
Common mistakes I've seen include,
using one curly bracket instead of two.
Second, not copy pasting the column header exactly.
And third, not giving this video a like
if you found it helpful.
If you enjoyed this episode of Think Outside the Box,
make sure to check out the entire playlist
where I share even more creative ways to stand out at work.
See you on the next video.
In the meantime, have a great one.