Tuesday's Tip #68: The Power of Email Merge

The Power of Email Merge

What is it?

When you use Word/Outlook/Excel to send a individual of emails to a list (usually in Excel)  with unique content specific to each user. This is not when you send the same email and put every user's email in the BCC field.

When do you use it?

Although there are a few scenarios, the most common one is when you export a list of users and related information from another program and need to send specific content to a group of users. For example, you want to send each customer an email that contains their name, shipping address and history of their orders last year. Another example, you want to send your employees an email that contains the benefit choices they have selected.

Can I (Should I) Use Constant Contact or Mail Chimp Instead?

Products like Constant Contact or Mail Chimp allow you to send large amounts of emails to groups of users. Most often, this content is mostly generic. These are great for newsletters, announcements and the like. 

When NOT to use Email Merge

1. Sending more than 200 emails per day.
2. The content you're sending out is exactly the same in each email.

How do you do it?

1. Create (most often by exporting from another program) an Excel file containing the list and other unique content to be used in the email.
2. In Word, create a new document which will serve as the email body.
3. Link the word document to the Excel list.
4. Create fields in the Word document that will contain the linked data from the Excel list.
5. Perform the merge from Word.

Ways Clients Utilize My Expertise

1. CONSULT. Hire me to consult on a process and product. There are many products that can be used in many different ways. Most companies use a variety of these. Hiring someone like me to help evaluate what product is best for your particular organization and technology environment can save both time and money.
2. DEVELOP AND TRAIN. Retain me to create a process and documentation for your unique environment and train the specific users on the process to save resources as well as simplify. 
3. OUTSOURCE.  Utilize me as an extension of your organization. I can work with your IT group to take over the entire process including exporting data from your system, sorting and filtering it to your specifications, creating the merged email and sending it from a shared mailbox.

Client Profiles 

 I like to share specific examples to help you identify with my clients and ways that I am helping them.

Client #1: Small Publishing Company

Summary. This client is a small publishing company that sends emails to their customers that contain the details of their orders from last year to offer them the ability to order the same or more copies of their publication.

Problem. This client did not have an internal resource to provide this service nor did they want to take this on in addition to what they were already doing. They needed someone to remotely export the data from their accounting software, create the report, filter accordingly, create the emails with customer specific details and send the emails.

Solution. I worked with their IT group to get remote access to their data. When they let me know, I export the data, sort and filter it per specifications, create a Word document which will serve as an email, send to them for approval, create the merge fields in the email and send the emails.

Client #2: Large Organization

Summary. Client needed to create individual emails with a summary of benefit information for a group of employees.

Problem. The client had a list of specific data for hundreds of employees. They needed to create individual emails that contained the specific benefits that each employee had selected for the upcoming year.

Solution. The client wanted assistance to maximize resources in creating a process including documentation for creating this content to be sent to employees in the organization annually.