Goal: Setting up a system that will allow you to send bulk outreach emails directly from your Gmail.
Ideal Outcome: You will be able to easily send customized emails to multiple addresses – which, thanks to modern technology, you will not have to create manually.
Prerequisites or requirements:
- Basically, you need a Gmail address – and if you don’t have one, you can easily create it. :).
- You also need to gather information about the contacts you want to send your bulk emails to.
Why this is important: Outreach emails are extremely important for your digital marketing efforts – but sending them manually can be a real chore, especially if you want to make them look as natural as possible. Obviously, sending the same email to 30 different recipients is pretty far from “natural” when they can see the entire list of people the email is addressed to.
Where this is done: In your browser, in your Gmail client, to be more specific.
When this is done: Whenever you need to send the same email to multiple addresses.Who does this: You, your VA, your SEO, or a digital marketing agency you have employed.
Environment setup
- If you don’t have a Gmail address yet, create one at this address.
- Also, you will have to install Yet Another Email Merge, following the steps described later on in this SOP. This add-on will allow you to merge your database spreadsheet with your Gmail, so that you can send bulk emails.
Create a database with your contacts’ information
To be able to send bulk emails, you will first have to create a database containing all of your contacts’ information. Don’t worry, though – aside from being a tad time-consuming, this process will not be difficult at all. Here are the steps you need to follow:
- Create a new Google Sheet.
- Name it something like “Gmail Bulk Outreach Contacts Information”. If you need to create multiple sheets, be sure to add something that will distinguish them (e.g. “Gmail Bulk Outreach Contacts Information – Who creates emojis”).
- Create columns for the different types of information you hold about your contacts: first name, last name, email, phone number, company name, etc.
- Add the information to each of the columns (one contact per row).
Enable “Templates” in Gmail
Templates allow users to easily send the same email reply without actually copy-pasting it.
Follow these steps to enable templates in Gmail (it only needs to be done once and it will be there forever – or until you follow the same procedure to disable it, at least):
- Open Gmail.
- Go to the gear icon → Settings → See all settings
- Click on the “Advanced” tab.
- Look for the “Templates” option and click on “Enable”
- Click on “Save changes”.
Install Yet Another Mail Merge
As mentioned in the beginning of this SOP, you will have to install the Yet Another Email Merge add-on to your Google Sheets. Here are the steps to follow:
- Go to the Google Sheet database you have created.
- Go to Add-ons → Get add-ons.
- Search for “Yet Another Mail Merge”.
- Install the add-on and authorize it.
Create an email template
Before sending a bulk email, you will, of course, have to create an email template. This is easy too:
- Go to Gmail, and open the email compose window, as you would when sending any other email.
- Write your email template. Don’t forget to include the email subject as well!
- Use double curly brackets ( {{}} ) to include merge fields for the contact information you entered in the sheet. For instance, you can use {{First Name}} to personalize each email with the contact’s name. Remember, the merge field should be written exactly like the title of the column in the spreadsheet – and yes, capitalization is taken into account.
- Our recommendation is for you to include an unsubscribe link at the end of the email, right after the signature. You do want your emails to reach your recipients, but you don’t want to spam them.
- To add an unsubscribe link, select the word and add a hyperlink to https://app.yamm.com/unsubscribe. For example, your unsubscribe link could look like this: “Click here to unsubscribe from these emails.”
- To add an unsubscribe link, select the word and add a hyperlink to https://app.yamm.com/unsubscribe. For example, your unsubscribe link could look like this: “Click here to unsubscribe from these emails.”
- Use double curly brackets ( {{}} ) to include merge fields for the contact information you entered in the sheet. For instance, you can use {{First Name}} to personalize each email with the contact’s name. Remember, the merge field should be written exactly like the title of the column in the spreadsheet – and yes, capitalization is taken into account.
- Right next to the “Delete” icon in the compose email window, there’s an arrow. Click on that, then go to “Templates” → “Save draft as template” → “Save as new template” → Enter the name of the canned response → click on the “Save” button.
Send Your Bulk Email
- Go to your Google Sheet database.
- Click on “Add-ons” → “Yet Another Mail Merge” → “Start Mail Merge”
- Click “Continue” (you will get to send 50 free emails every day).
- Enter or customize the sender’s name.
- Select the template (i.e. the canned email template you have saved).
- Tick “Track emails opened, clicked or bounced”.
- Send a test email to verify that all merge fields are working correctly — you will receive a copy of the email that would be sent to the first recipient in your database.
- Once you’ve verified that everything is working correctly, hit the “Send” button.
- A tracking report will appear on the right side of the screen, showing the number of opened, clicked, responded, bounced, and unsubscribed actions. Plus, the status for each recipient will be updated under the “Merge status” column.
Voila! You are now the proud owner of a fail-proof method you can use to send bulk outreach emails using nothing more than your Gmail account.
