Sending Out Unique Attachments to each Recipient using EmailMerge

Do you need to email a list of contacts a “similar” email but with a different attachment for each person? For example: maybe you need to send out invoices (pdf files) to all your current customers.

This is easy to do in Outlook with a little help from Email Merge.

Step 1: Create a contact (and attachment list) using Excel

Step 2: Use EmailMerge to write and send out the email to the list you created in Step 1 (a separate email with different attachment will be sent to each person in your list)

Step 1: Create a contact (and attachment list) using Excel

You will need to create a list in Excel. This will be a list of the people that you want to send the email to, along with the full filename (including the path) of the file you want to send to each person as shown below.

Start a new spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel.

Select “Blank workbook”

The first row of the spreadsheet should have the names of the fields as shown.

You must have a field with the email address.

If you are sending attachments too, then you must have a field with the FULL NAME INCLUDING PATH of the file that you want to send as shown.

You can add additional columns/fields to the spreadsheet if you want.

Save the spreadsheet and close Excel.

Step 2: Use EmailMerge to write and send your email from Outlook

In order to follow the steps below you will need to download and install EmailMerge. Once you have EmailMerge installed, you will have a few addition buttons inside Outlook.

Click on EmailMerge in the Outlook Ribbon

Click on “Create a new Merge”

You can choose whether to start your email merge process with a Blank email (see Step 2) or select an Email template (pre-set email) you created.

Select “Start with Blank email’ and Click Next.

You will edit this email later.

Select Excel file from the list and then click the button shown in the image to choose the Excel file that you created for your list earlier.

Click Next.

Select the sheet from the screen and click Next.

Select the correct fields from the drop-downs on the screen (at the minimum, you need to select the correct field for Recipients Email Address)

Click on the Select fields for Attachments/CC/BCC link as shown.

Click on the Attachments tab

Tick the appropriate field which has the path and filename of the attachments for each recipient. In my case, I will tick the checkbox “Attachments” (Please refer to the image above)

Click OK to go back and then click Next.

Select the people to whom you want to send this email.

Click Next.

Email Merge will display a list of all contacts you had selected to be added to your current sending list.

You can verify and confirm your list here. Click Next.

Here you can define rules for how Email Merge for Outlook handles missing contact fields.

Click Next.

Click on the Goto Email to Edit button to edit the email.  Click Next.

How to write emails and insert m-fields.

A new email window will appear.

Write whatever you want to in the Subject and Body of the email but do not enter anything in the To field.

You can now insert m-Fields in your email. m-Fields are basically place holders that will be replaced with real data when the emails get created (in the example, we have a field called [First Name] that is later replaced with the real first names from the list).

On the EmailMerge toolbar select from the drop down “Field”, the field you want to insert and click “Insert m-field”

Add any more m-fields that you want to the email (you can add m-fields to the Subject or Body of the email).

Once done Click Send to go back to EmailMerge.

You can preview your emails on this screen. The preview shows who the email is going to, the attachment and any other customizations that you had set up earlier.

Once your email is ready, Click Next

Here you can configure some sending options and choose the Email Account to send the emails from

Select whether you want the email to be sent out immediately or sent out later (saved in the drafts folder)

Click Finish to let the wizard complete.

After you have successfully completed, you will see that separate emails for each of the recipients that you selected have been created in your Outbox or Drafts folder.

These emails contain the message that you typed together with the “m-Fields” being replaced with the actual details of each of the recipients. Each of the emails will also have the correct attachment added to it based on your Excel list.

And that’s it…. thousands of users use EmailMerge for Outlook everyday to send out their sales and marketing emails. If you are not a user yet,  you can download a fully functional 30 day trial version to test it for yourself.