How many times have you labored away sending the same email over and over again?

Instead of copying and pasting the same content with minor tweaks over and over again, there’s one simple tool that can save you hundreds if not thousands of laborious hours.

This one invaluable tool can be used from everything from business to personal relationship management, and you can even use it to hire your next accountant.

This life-changing tool is call mail merge.

It’s not new, but still not enough people are utilizing it nearly enough.

So the next time you need to send out a mass message to friends, family, business acquaintances or prospects, don’t just Blind Copy and Carbon Copy emails to everyone or rely on MailChimp. These blast messages feel highly impersonal.

The solution to all your problems is as simple as uploading a CSV and writing a quick template to send a mail merge that is both efficient and hyper-personalizable.

Here are 4 ways that mail merge can change your life:

Mail Merge: The Automated Way to Get Dates or Make New Friends

Even things as personal as dating or inviting friends to dinner or a party can be executed with a mail merge. Your message can be as generic or personalized as you like depending on how many custom inserts you include. Oftentimes I’ll even create a custom sentence in my mail merge CSV with a line like {!Personal_Note} that’s specific to each person I’m mailing. While that takes more time to create, it’s still a lot faster than sending emails one at a time (even with copy and paste), but still more one-on-one than an obvious mass email to your friends.

And if you’re a serial dater trying to line up a bunch of dates you can even include custom inserts like {!Location} and {!Time} to line up your calendar for the next month. (haha) You probably want to include a custom sentence or phrase in here if you want to actually get the dates.

Save time with Searching for The Best Service Provider or Products with Mass Email

Are you in the market for buying a new security system or looking for a lawyer?

Do you find yourself asking service providers and businesses the same tedious questions over and over?

Shopping around for reliable and competent service providers can be a time consuming nightmare. Finding accounting and law services online is easy, but contacting each of them individually means a lot of time online or on the phone chasing down potential providers. By using custom inserts like {!Service_Name}, you can reach hundreds of providers via email, and quickly ask all the right questions you need to locate your best options.

Job Applications Is a Numbers Game: Why You Should Blast Out Personalized Applications & Interview Requests

Searching and applying for jobs can feel like a full-time-job. Sending emails with every resume and a personal note is tedious and time consuming. You can simplify your application process by creating a basic introduction template that can be sent to multiple, potential employers at once.

And you can even try my favorite tactic that got me every job I’ve ever had: circumventing the job poster and directly cold emailing the CEO with an idea or question that demonstrates the value that you can offer the company.

Mail merge allows you to create and categorize your email lists based on position or type of company you are applying to. Each list can be personalized with custom inserts like {!Company} and {!Position}, saving you the headache of addressing each email individually. Using relevant custom inserts inside your subject line and template will increase open and response rates that get you more interviews to land your dream job.

Ramp Up your Outbound Sales with Regular Mail Merges

Cold emails are still the most effective way to generate qualified leads for closing deals, especially for B2B companies. Mail merges are an easy way to scale your outbound email process. Having a bigger list of prospects to email while also making sure you have a high open and response rate will keep your pipeline full of qualified leads. Custom inserts like {!Competitor}, {!Industry}, and other personalized firmographic information will help you create effective and scalable outbound sales processes.

4 Steps to Execute Your First Mail Merge

1. Create a spreadsheet in excel of your contacts with “First Name,” “Last Name,” “Email,” and any other relevant fields you need from your custom inserts and save it as a CSV.
2. Write a personalized email template with custom inserts. You can create these inserts by using code like {!First}, {{First}}, and other methods based on what program or tools you are using to do the mail merge.
3. Send a test email to yourself in a CSV with your own information to check to make sure everything reads correctly.
4. Send out the mail merge! (You can do this with a premium account of Yesware, Google App’s free plugin/script, “Yet Another Mail Merge, or Outreach.io if you’re doing more complicated campaigns where you would like to AB test heavily.)