Can I automate sending emails in Gmail one at a time?

November 25, 2015 10:26 AM

I'd like to send the same email to a group of about 40 people, but instead of sending it BCC with me in the "to" field, I'd really like to send it individually to each person. Is there a way to automate this?

I'm guessing not or spammers would have figured it out already, but it's a holiday greeting to business contacts and I'd rather make it at least look like it I sent it to each person specially. It will contain a picture in the body of the email with some basic holiday well wishes. Ideas welcome. I'd just like it to look like a regular email from me to them only.

posted by juniperesque to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

As far as I know, what you are looking to do is a "Mail Merge with Gmail." The instructions for this are excruciating. Here is an add-on that, while it sounds cumbersome, is so much less excruciating than doing it without the addon.
posted by DarlingBri at 10:30 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

What you want to solve this once is mail merge (which is much easier with actual email programs rather than any webmail service I'm familiar with.)

To do this frequently, what you want is an electronic mailing list. The catch is that these are typically opt-in (i.e., everyone receiving the email knows perfectly well they're on a list.) You can configure these things so they look like you're sending it from just one person to just one person on casual inspection, however.

If you are using a corporate IT provider, there is a non-zero chance they already have something set up for this scenario (using MS Exchange, etc.) They may have it set up so that the "lists" you can send to consist only of people inside your organization, but that's more of a safety feature than a hard limit.
posted by SMPA at 11:09 AM on November 25, 2015

You can set up a client, like Thunderbird, to email through your gmail account, and then running the mail merge is much easier with the client application.
posted by andoatnp at 11:21 AM on November 25, 2015

Text Expander also is a wonderful way to automate writing the same thing multiple times. I've used it to send personalized emails when I don't have the time/energy to set up a merge.
posted by mulkey at 11:27 PM on November 25, 2015

You can set up a spreadsheet in google drive, then modify an existing sendmail script that you can select from a script library and attach to the spreadsheet. (You can run the script to send individual customized emails). It's how we used to do all the secret quonsar mailings until google limited folks to sending 100 emails from a spreadsheet in a 24 hour period. (Now we just do confirmation messages that way)

You can customize within the script your message (greet everyone by name, include information you have for each one, etc.) If you do go this way, I'd be happy to send you a copy of the script we use, and explain how you can change it to meet your needs.
posted by julen at 6:30 PM on November 26, 2015