Do you regularly send out marketing emails, newsletters or family greetings to the same group of people?
If yes, then you can make this quick and easy by creating Email List in Outlook.
You can create Email List for different groups of people for example, you could have an Email List called Family and add the email addresses of all your family members to that group. Similarly you can create list for newsletters etc…
This saves you a lot of time when sending email blast as you are not required to individually type in email addresses… just select the group and Outlook sends a copy of the same email to all contacts.
Here are the steps to create an Email List in Outlook: (Instructions are for Outlook 2013 unless specifically mentioned)
- Open Outlook
- Click the Home tab > click New Items > click More Items > click Contact Group. This will display the blank Contact Group screen as shown below.
- Enter a Name for the group/list
- Click Add Members button on the ribbon. You have the option to select your contacts from your Outlook Contact list, Address Book or add a new contact. Select one of this options from the drop-down list
- Now add your contacts to the group by clicking on the contact and click Members -> button. To select multiple contacts, press the CTRL button on the keyword and click on each contact and then click the Members -> button
- Click OK
- Click Save & Close
This will now save all your contacts to that group. You can repeat the same steps above to create different groups.
When you need to send an email to this group:
- Open a new email
- Click on the To: button
- Select the Group you want to send the email too
- Send the email
The email will be sent to all the contacts in the group.
NOTE: the emails will not be personalized and it will show the email address of every person this email is sent to in the TO: field on the recipient’s side.
So if you are looking for a quick way to send a non-personalized email blast, this works perfectly for you.
However if you are looking for a way to send emails which are personalized and individually addressed to the recipient, you can try out our Email Merge for Outlook addin.
With EmailMerge, you can personalize your emails for example Greetings/Salutation:
Hello John
Or
Hello Michelle
When the email is received by the person, he/she will only see THEIR email address in the To: field therefore they are more likely to read and respond to your email.
Check out the free demo video on our website for the mail merge addin for outlook
You can also try it out yourself by downloading the 30 day free trial
I hope you find this tip useful.
If you know of other ways to send out email blast from Outlook, share it with our readers by leaving a comment below.
You can also add the group to BBC and “Undisclosed Recipients” plus your address to the “To:” field.
I also name the group with the prefix “Grp-“, e.g. Grp-Family, Grp-Friends, etc. Then all you need to do is to type “grp” into the To: or “Bcc” field and the list of groups will appear.
Addendum.
I only use “Undisclosed Recipients” for those who know me, e.g. friends, personal, etc. NEVER to customers or prospects.
Can you do a “undisclosed Recipients” on meeting request?