Email Merge templates can be a very useful feature to both; save time and improve the quality of your emails. Sharing templates can spread these benefits throughout your organization.
In this post, we share how you can create templates for Email Merge for Outlook and then share it with other users in your organization.
Some background first…
EmailMerge for Outlook is used by Outlook users to create and send personalized copies of (usually) sales, marketing or informational emails to customers.
Your company may want to create standard templates for all users of Email Merge to send out standardized emails to customers…. to maintain uniform messaging, branding etc. These templates could be sales emails, testimonial requests, new announcements etc.
You cannot use normal Outlook or Word templates to do this. Instead you have to use the template functionality that is included with Email Merge.
The key steps are:
- Create templates in EmailMerge
- Export and share templates (from the computer created on)
- Import templates (on other computers)
Details of each of the steps are given below.
-
Create templates in EmailMerge
Once Outlook has started, select EmailMerge > Template Manager from the EmailMerge toolbar on your Main Outlook window.
Click New button on the Template Manager screen. A new blank email will be opened.
Compose your email using any Outlook function for the email message, just like when you create a regular Outlook email.
Insert m-Fields to the email by placing the cursor in the appropriate place, click on the Insert m-Field drop-down of the EmailMerge toolbar/ribbon (If you want to personalize the email)
Enter a relevant Subject for the Email (Your Subject will help you identify this template among others on the Template Manager screen)
Click Save Template on the EmailMerge toolbar/ribbon. This template will be added to the list of templates in the Template Manager screen.
-
Export and share templates (from the computer created on)
Once Outlook has started, select EmailMerge > Template Manager from the EmailMerge toolbar on your Main Outlook window
Select the template you want to export on the Template Manager screen.
Right Click on the template and from the selection choose Export Template
Select the location where you wish to save the template
Attach the template (Zip) in the email and email to the users you wish to share or you can put the zip file on a shared drive and email the location to the users
-
Import templates (on other computers)
Select EmailMerge > Template Manager from the EmailMerge toolbar on your Main Outlook window
On the Template Manager screen, click on Import and browse to select that Zip file which has the templates.
Closing Comments
Sharing Email Merge templates can save time and improve the quality of your emails.
If you haven’t tried Email Merge for Outlook yet, you can download a 30 Day trial version by clicking on the image below.
