A reader asked… How can I do an email merge in Outlook and send each person a customized attachment (PDF)?
In this post I discuss why you may want to do this and the easiest way to get it done.
Why?
Existing Outlook users are using this feature to provide their customers a more personalized service in several ways.
An accounting firm generates PDFs of customized tax reminders for their clients and then uses Email Merge to distribute the correct report to each customer
- Another professional services firm creates personalized invoices in PDF format and then uses Email Merge to send them out.
- An investment company sends out recommendations to their clients using this technique.
I am sure that you can come up with your own ways to use this to better serve your own customers.
Setup your list
The first thing you need to do is setup a list which contains the email addresses of the people you wish to contact, and the names of the file that will be sent to them. In this example I am assuming that you will do this using Excel.
Simply add a field (column) to the excel sheet which has the full name (with path) of the file that you wish to send as shown below.
(You can use Excel formulas to make up the file name if they follow some kind of rule)
Merge and Send the Emails
Now it’s time to send out the emails. While there is no built-in way in Outlook to do this, you can easily do this if you are using the Outlook add-in Email Merge Pro for Outlook.
Start Outlook
Click the Email Merge Wizard button. The Wizard will guide you to creating your email and to choosing the Excel file as your data source.
When you come to the following screen, click the Select field’s hyperlink.
Click Attachments and tick the name of the field that contains the file name.
Click OK to return to the Wizard.
Follow the rests of the steps of the Wizard to send out the email.
Email Merge will create a separate email for each person, with the correct file attached to each one.
Our customers have used Email Merge to increase sales and to provide better support to their customers. Please share your own ideas in the comments below.
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