How do I create a mail merge in Gmail?

July 22, 2007 5:03 PM

On occasion, I send a mass email to about 200 people. I like to customize the message with the recipient's name in the body. I have used Word/Outlook to do this in the past, but I'd like to find a solution for doing this with Gmail. I'm okay with a web-based solution - and even okay with paying for the message to be sent, as long as it's less than $25 or so for the entire batch. Just want it to look professional and show the personalization that I'd like.

I have the email addresses, names, and other information stored in an address book, which I can export to Excel or CSV or any other format. Thanks for your suggestions.

posted by scottso17 to computers & internet (8 comments total)

MailChimp.
posted by ReiToei at 5:08 PM on July 22, 2007

On a Mac? There's an app called Direct Mail that's good for exactly that (it'll also do HTML emails if you need it.) Costs about $30, I've used it for small campaigns, no complaints.

If you want a web-based solution, Campaign Monitor is pretty cheap and they're popular among the small business set. Their market is designers who need to send HTML newsletters on behalf of clients, but I suspect you could use it for plain text emails. I have a few lists with 500+ subscribers and a hosted solution is usually better once you get up around that size.
posted by sonofslim at 5:14 PM on July 22, 2007

If you turn on POP3 access in your Gmail account, you can easily hook it up to Outlook or Outlook Express or Thunderbird or any other local mail client, and then do it the old way.
posted by flabdablet at 6:05 PM on July 22, 2007

I second Campaign Monitor. I've been using it at work and it's a very classy and well thought out system.

Some caution should be taken if sending 200 messages from your normal email client. You could easily be marked as a spammer by some ISPs. Campaign Monitor has it in their best interest to make sure that emails sent through their service won't be blacklisted.
posted by Plug Dub In at 6:11 PM on July 22, 2007

I can get you set up with an excellent email marketing engine. Send an email to the address in my profile.
posted by bshort at 7:35 PM on July 22, 2007

MailChimp rocks!
posted by teststrip at 7:35 PM on July 22, 2007

I agree with using an online service like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor. The extra cost is justified by the fact that you don't have to worry about being labelled a spammer.
posted by aparrish at 7:52 PM on July 22, 2007

Thirding MailChimp.
posted by spilon at 8:53 PM on July 22, 2007