Using Microsoft Outlook and Word to Create Bulk E-mail Campaigns

You don’t need to purchase any additional software (such as WorldMerge) to create powerful e-mail campaigns if you have Outlook and Word. You just need to know how to do it!

There are several ways to do this, such as creating the document beforehand or at runtime, and it is a matter of your personal preference. In this example, we will create the document at run time.

Step 1. Select the Contact Information

Using Outlook, select the contacts and the view that you will be working with. Open the desired view (In this example, we selected “View” then “Current View” then the Address Cards view. We could have also created a custom view with only names and e-mail addresses. Doing so would reduce the amount of data to be merged and might speed up the process in a large merge. Next, we selected the desired contacts by holding the <Ctrl> button while clicking the contacts we wanted.

Step 2: Select the Mail Merge option from the menu.

This opens the Mail Merge Contacts dialog window. Now, establish the merge options. Do you want all contacts, selected ones, save it to a file, save it to an e-mail? When the options are set, give the message a subject line, then click OK to open Word.

When Word opens, you will be ready to start typing your document. Feel free to insert any hyperlinks and pictures, but remember that this will add to the “weight” of the mail. Within the document, you might want to insert personalization data (recipient’s name, etc.). This is a simple process. You select the “Insert Merge Field button, then select the data field to insert. In the example, we inserted the recipient’s first name.

When the document has been finished and you are ready to start the mailing, click the “Tools” menu and select the “Mail Merge” option.

The Mail Merge Helper will now open. Since the system already knows what document you want to merge and which contacts get it, you do not need to select the “Main Document” or the “Data Source.” You can now click the “Merge” button. This will actually create a separate mailing for each recipient.

When the Merge” dialog window opens, click on the Merge button to start the process.

Now, switch to Outlook. Open the “Outbox” window to see what you are sending. In our example, you see that we are sending the same (in name) message to our selected list of recipients.

When we open one of the messages, we will see that the “First Name” field is indeed inserted seamlessly and the message is sent on a personal basis (no endless list oif recipients here).

That is all there is to it!