Gmail has no feature to allow you send personalized mass emails. It doesn’t mean that you can’t send a personalized mass emails with your Gmail account. There are some add-ons that you can use to send personalized mass emails, including Yet Another Mail Merge (YAMM). However, they typically comes with recipient restrictions. If you want to send a personalized mass emails with your Gmail account, using Thunderbird might is the best option.
Thunderbird itself is a free desktop email client developed by Mozilla, the company behind Firefox web browser. This desktop email client is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. By default, Thunderbird has no feature to send personalized emails, but there is an add-on you can use to accomplish that task. It is Mail Merge, which is also available for free.
How to send personalized mass eails on Gmail for free
Step 1. Add your Gmail account to Thunderbird.
Before being able to add your Gmail account to Thunderbird you surely need to install it first on your computer. You can download the binary file of Thunderbird on its official site. Once installed, launch Thunderbird and go to Tools -> Account Settings.
On the Account Settings window, click Account Actions and select Add Mail Account.
Enter your login info and click the Continue button.
Select the email protocol (IMAP or POP3) and click the Done button.
You will be prompted to give Thunderbird an authorization to access your Gmail data. Just follow the steps.
Step 2. prepare the database of your recipients.
The Mail Merge add-on allows you to send the personalized mass emails directly to the contacts stored on the Address Book of Thunderbird. It also supports other sources like CSV file and spreadsheet file. In this example, we will use a spreadsheet as the data source.
You can create the database of your recipients in a spreadsheet file. Be it in a XLSX format or ODS (LibreOffice). Following is the example of spreadsheet file we created.
Step 3. Install the Mail Merge add-on.
Next, install the Mail Merge add-on your Thunderbird. Thunderbird add-ons are available in a XPI format. You can download the XPI file of the Mail Merge extension here. Once downloaded, go to Tools -> Add-ons to open the Add-ons Manager of Thunderbird.
On the Add-ons Manager window, click the Plugins menu on the left panel, followed by the gear icon and select Install Add-on from File.
Next, select the XPI file of the Mail Merge add-on you have download and click the Install Now button to install it.
You need to restart your Thunderbird to apply the new change.
Step 4. Start sending the email.
Now it’s time to send the email. To do so, go Message -> New Message (Ctrl+N).
Write the content of your email. To add the names of your recipients, type {{Name}} on the parts where you want to mention the names. Tailor Name with the first row of the name column on spreadsheet file.
Once done writing the content, go to the To field to add your recipients and type {{Email}}. Tailor Email with the first row of the email address column on your spreadsheet file). Don’t forget to give your email a subject on the Subject field.
To send the email, go to File -> Mail Merge.
On the Source section, select Spreadsheet and browse the spreadsheet file you have created on the step 2 above on the File section and click the OK button.
Thunderbird will be sending your email to email addresses on the the spreadsheet file you selected.