There are a bunch of tools to allow you send personalized mass emails like Mailchimp or MailerLite. However, they tend to better suited for marketing purpose. If you want to send a personalized mass emails for non-marketing purpose, meeting invitation for instance, Thunderbird can help you get the job done.

Thunderbird is a free desktop email client developed by Mozilla. It is available for Mac, Windows and Linux and supports email services like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. To send a personalized mass emails using Thunderbird, you need to install an add-on called Mail Merge.

Before getting started, you can prepare the database of the email addresses you want to send the email to. You can save the database file in either CSV or spreadsheet format. Or, you can also send the email to the contacts on the Address Book of Thunderbird.

How to send a mass emails in Thunderbird

In this example, we use spreadsheet format to save the email addresses of the recipients. Following is the example.

Once you have prepared the database of the email addresses, visit this page to download the add-on of Mail Merge. The add-on file is available in XPI format.

Once you have downloaded the add-on, launch Thunderbird on your computer and go to Tools -> Add-ons to open the Add-ons Manager.

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.

Select the XPI file of the Mail Merge add-on you have download and click the Install Now button to install it.

Restart your Thunderbird to apply the new change.

Start sending the mass emails

Once you have prepared the email addresses and installed the Mail Merge add-on, it’s time to start sending the email. To do so, go to Message -> New Message (Ctrl+N). On the To field, type {{Email}} (tailor Email with the first row of the email address column on your database).

Give your email a subject and write content. To add the names of your recipients, type {{Name}} on the parts where you want to mention the names. Again, tailor Name with the first row of the name column on your database. Here is the example.

Once you are done writing the content of the email, go to File -> Mail Merge.

On the Source section, select Spreadsheet and browse the database (the spreadsheet file) of your recipients you have prepared earlier on the File section and click the OK button.

Done! Thunderbird will be sending your email to email addresses on the selected database.