How 'mail merge' can speed up mass mailings

By Kim Komando

Despite what many people think, e-mail has not put an end to the good old-fashioned marketing letter delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

If you send mass mailings to customers, employees or others, you need to know about "mail merge," a feature in Microsoft Word and other word-processing programs.

Here's how it works: You write a letter to your customers, letting them know about your company's magnificent offerings, changes or promotions. With a few easy steps (see below), you can link this letter to a list of your customers. You then print your individualized letters, along with the envelopes or labels, and off they go.

No more of that impersonal, "Dear Customer" nonsense.

Furthermore, you may already have a list of your customers, ready to use. You can take it out of the contacts in Microsoft Outlook, or you can use a database or spreadsheet.

Mail merge has been around a long time, so most word processors should have it. I am going to use Microsoft Word 2003 as my example. But the overview may fit previous Word versions as well as other word processors.

This really is a big time saver. And you can personalize your letters much more than you probably think. So let's get into this in a little more detail.

1. Write your letter.

Your mailing has to be a basic form letter. It might talk about your company's new product, it could discuss the new employees you've hired, or maybe it would announce an expansion of your product line or services. Better yet, it could include a coupon or a discount to entice sales.

Whatever, it should be of interest to every recipient.

When the letter is written, it should have placeholders for the personalized portions. That would include first and last names, address and salutation. You can also add a placeholder for a personalized sentence (or more) to catch the recipients' attention.

The placeholders will look something like this:

Dear Now you have to tie it into your customer list.

2. Put together your list.

Word (and other word processors) can use a variety of sources for a mailing list. Spreadsheets such as Excel work well. So does the address book in Microsoft Outlook. If your customers are in Access or another database, that should work. You can also build a list within Word.

Whatever the source, the list will look the same. You'll have several vertical columns, or fields, each with a heading: First Name, Last Name, Street Address, and so on. The mail-merge utility within Word links to those fields.

The customer listings run horizontally under the headings. Each horizontal listing is a record. You can use as many fields as you like. In fact, more is better. The greater the number, the more flexibility you will have.

3. Extra fields to consider.

Many people don't bother with a salutation field. But this is an example of added flexibility. Custom salutations reduce the form-letter feel.

Let's say you have three people on your list: Dr. Samuel Jones, Emily Harwood and Joe Smith, the mayor. Dr. Jones is formal, and prefers to be addressed as Dr. Jones. Emily is your best friend, so you want to address her by her first name. And Smith would be addressed as Mayor.

If you had only the name and title fields, you could not satisfy all three requirements with one placeholder. But a salutation field would do it. Simply enter the way each person prefers to be addressed.

You can also add personalized comments. Again, that makes it look less like a form letter.

So, add a field and call it comment. You don't have to put anything in it. You may not feel close enough to some people to add a comment. At the end of the letter, below your signature, add this placeholder:

For individuals where the Comment field is empty, this portion of the letter will be blank.

4. It's time to let it run.

When you run mail merge, Microsoft Word goes through these records, one after another. Where you have placed the first name placeholder, it puts the customer's first name. Same goes for the last name, the address, the salutation and anything else you're using.

When it finishes filling in the blanks on the first letter, it starts on the second record. All of this happens as each individual letter is being printed. This continues until the list is completed, or the printer dies of exhaustion.

You can do the same thing with envelopes or mailing labels. Mail merge is very flexible. You can even use it to send a broadcast e-mail. If you're printing, be sure you have enough paper in the printer.

5. The technical details.

To get started on mail merge, open Word and click Tools>>Letters and Mailings. Click Mail Merge. A wizard will open in the right panel. It walks you through the setup in six steps.

Microsoft Office Online has an extensive tutorial on Mail Merge on its site (see this page). It's accessible through Help in Word 2003.

The process is similar in Word 2002. But after clicking Tools>>Letters and Mailings, click Mail Merge Wizard.

The Microsoft Works word processor is a little less helpful. Click Tools>>Mail Merge>>Open Data Source. It will then give you a list of fields to enter.

If you are using another word processor, check Help. All word processors should have a mail-merge function.