Do you need to send personalized emails using the ‘To’ as well as ‘CC’ or ‘BCC’ fields in Microsoft Outlook?
In this post, we will look at why this feature is useful and how it can be used with Standss Email Merge Pro.
Why is it Useful?
The usefulness of this is when you need to send a copy of the same email to two or more people in the same company. This feature is not limited to one business or industry and some scenarios where it can be used includes:
- For sending event reminders via email to the attendees, while also including their assistants as a CC.
- Sending copies of statements to clients, while also listing their accounts manager as a CC for businesses.
- For schools, sending email newsletters the one parent and including the other parent as a CC as well.
In all these examples the To and CC field are related to each other i.e. there could be a different CC email address for each person you are emailing.
Before I show you how to do this in Outlook, you may be wondering…
‘Why not just send each person a separate copy of the same email?’
The main reasons for this is that you want all recipients to be aware that the others have also received the email. They can now also do Reply-All on the email your sent to start a conversation if they need to.
Setting Up Your List
The first thing you need to do is to setup a list that contains the email address you want to use in the ‘To’ field and also the email address(es) for the CC field.
For this example, I am assuming that your list is in Microsoft Excel similar to the one that I have shown below:
Note:
- The To field (in this case the Customer Name) can only contain ONE email address.
- The CC field can contain multiple email addresses separated by comas or semi-colons as shown for Jane Doe above.
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 Standss 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 CC/BCC and then select the field that your CC email address is in.
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.
Related articles:
You can use this with our earlier article on setup your spreadsheet to email merge a different attachment to each person in Outlook.