You can use mail merge in Gmail to send personalized emails with merge tags like @firstname and @lastname.
- When an email is sent, the merge tags are replaced with the appropriate name for each recipient.
Before you start
You can use multi-send and mail merge on desktop devices with these Google Workspace editions:
- Workspace Individual
- Business Standard
- Business Plus
- Enterprise Starter
- Enterprise Standard
- Enterprise Plus
- Education Standard
- Education Plus
If you don't find multi-send in Gmail, contact your Google Workspace administrator.
Create a personalized email with mail merge
Multi-send mode must be turned on to use mail merge. Learn how to use multi-send for email marketing, newsletters, and announcements.
- On your computer, go to Gmail.
- In the top left, click Compose
.
- From the toolbar at the bottom, click Turn multi-send mode on/off
.
- Enter your email draft.
- To find a list of available merge tags, press @.
- To filter the list, enter the name of a merge tag.
- Supported merge tags include:
- First name: @firstname
- Last name: @lastname
- Full name: @fullname
- Email address: @email
- Supported merge tags include:
- To select a merge tag, press Enter.
Send email with multi-send turned on
When you send the multi-send email, Gmail delivers a copy of the message to each recipient. For example, each recipient finds their first name instead of the @firstname tag.
If you add recipients:
- From Google Contacts- Gmail uses the first and last name saved in Contacts.
- Who aren't in your Google Contacts- Mail merge guesses the first and last name based on how you enter the name.
- For example, if you enter “Lisa Brown <lisa@example.com>” as a recipient, Gmail uses “Lisa” as @firstname and “Brown” as @lastname.
To make sure Gmail uses the correct names in the email, add recipients to your Google Contacts before sending.
Learn about default values for merge tags
If you use a merge tag but one or more recipients doesn’t have a value for that tag, when you try to send the email, you’ll get an error dialog. For example, you’ll get an error if you try to email “Sam <sam@example.com>” and use the @lastname merge tag.
In this situation, you can:
- Enter a default value in the error dialog.
- For example, for recipients who don’t have a first name, “Hi @firstname” can be “Hi friend.”
- Go back to the draft and:
- Edit the recipient info to add the missing value in the Recipients box or in Google Contacts.
- Remove any recipient with missing values from the Recipients box.
Understand mail merge limitations
Merge tags are not supported in:
- Email subject lines
- Hyperlinked text or URLs