Mail Merge

Mail merge sends one personal email to every person on a list you already have: an Excel or CSV file, or addresses pasted from Outlook or Gmail. Each recipient gets their own email with their name and details, sent from your own mailbox, and nobody sees the others. An optional reminder goes to those who don't reply.

Mail merge or campaign?

Both send through the same engine. Mail merge is the quick way when you have the list and one message.

Try it before you sign up

The mail merge pages on datasend.ai, such as "Mail merge from Excel", let you start without an account.

1. Upload your Excel or paste your addresses on the page.
2. Check who gets an email, then click Continue: write the email.
3. Create your account. Your list waits in your browser and opens in Mail merge once you're in.

Uploading, writing and the preview are free and need no card. Your file or addresses are read in your browser; nothing is uploaded until you send.

Opening Mail merge

In the app, click Mail merge in the sidebar, right under Campaigns, or the Mail merge button at the top of the Campaigns page. The screen has three steps: Contacts, Email and Send.

A short guide above each step says what to do and what happens next. How does it work? runs a tour that points at each part of the step; it also runs by itself the first time you reach a step. Hide the guide folds the guide away and Show the guide brings it back.

Step 1: Contacts

Choose Excel / CSV or Paste addresses.

From a file:

1. Click Upload Excel or CSV, or drop the file on it. Excel (.xlsx, .xls, .xlsm), OpenDocument (.ods) and CSV files work; only the first sheet is read.
2. The first row must hold the column names, such as Name, Company, Email.
3. Check Column with the email. It is found automatically, and you can change it.

From pasted addresses:

1. Copy the addresses from the To, Cc or Bcc line in Outlook or Gmail, from an old email or from a table.
2. Paste them into the box. Each address can be on its own line or separated by commas or semicolons.
3. When "N addresses found" looks right, click Use these addresses.

If a name comes with the address, as in "Jane Smith" followed by her address in angle brackets, the greeting uses it. Edit addresses takes you back to the box.

You then see the number of recipients, the columns you can put into the text and the first few recipients. Rows without a valid email are left out, and an address that appears twice gets one email.

Note: One mail merge sends to at most 5,000 recipients. With a longer list, the first 5,000 rows are used.

Step 2: Email

1. Write the Subject.
2. Write the Email. The text starts with "Hello" (followed by the name, if your list has a name column) and ends with "Best regards". Write your message between them; the default text alone can't be sent.
3. To add a detail from the list, put the cursor where it belongs and click a column under Insert:. Columns become variables named after their headers, such as {{Name}} or {{Company}}; spaces and accents are replaced, so "First name" becomes {{First_name}}.
4. Check What … will see on the right. The arrows step through your recipients with their own details filled in.
5. Leave Remind those who don't reply on, or untick it. Pick after how many days: 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 or 10 (3 by default), and edit the reminder text.
6. Click Next.

The reminder goes in the same thread as a reply ("Re:" plus your subject), with your first email quoted below it. Whoever replies gets no reminder.

For recipients with an empty cell, add a fallback after a vertical bar: {{Name|there}} prints "there" when there is no name. An empty detail right before a comma takes its space along, so "Hello," never reads "Hello ,".

Step 3: Send

1. Under Send from, pick your mailbox.
2. No mailbox yet? Click Connect a mailbox and enter its Email, Password and Your name (sender), then click Connect. The login is tested before it is saved. For Gmail with two-step login, use an app password.
3. Read the plan line, for example "From you@company.com: 50 today, the rest on the next days."
4. Click Send N emails.

A mailbox connected here starts with a limit of 50 emails a day. The emails go out one by one, spread over time, so they look like you wrote each one, and replies come straight to your mailbox.

After sending

The progress view shows:

• Sending, Sent or Paused, and how many were sent out of the total.
• How many replies came in, how many reminders went out, how many addresses are being checked and how many were not delivered.
• When the reminder goes out.

Use Replies in Unibox to read and answer replies in the Unibox, Pause or Resume to stop and continue, and New mail merge to start another. Earlier mail merges lists your recent ones. Click one to see its progress.

What happens behind the scenes

A mail merge runs as an ordinary campaign named after your file, so it also appears on the Campaigns page with its leads and analytics.

• Every address is checked first. Addresses that don't exist are never sent to, which protects your mailbox.
• Your text goes out exactly as written: no AI rewriting and no open tracking.
• Instead of an unsubscribe link in the text, Gmail, Outlook and other apps show an Unsubscribe button next to your name. Anyone who unsubscribed from your earlier emails, and addresses on your blacklist, are skipped.
• The daily amount follows your mailbox's daily limit, which is shared with any campaigns using the same mailbox.
• A mail merge has no sending hours, so emails can also go out in the evening or at the weekend.

Tip: To send only during working hours, open the mail merge on the Campaigns page and add a sending schedule on its Options tab. See Campaign settings.

Free plan and limits

On the free plan the send button reads Unlock sending. Clicking it saves everything you prepared in your browser and opens the plan window. After you pay you come straight back to step 3 with everything filled in, ready to send. If your plan ends later, a running mail merge stops sending. See Billing.

After sending, Mail merge also offers Show the companies: companies in the DataSend database you could reach the same way.

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