Send personalised emails with mail merge

You can use mail merge in Gmail to send personalised email campaigns, newsletters and announcements to a wide audience.

Mail merge lets you personalise messages with merge tags, such as @firstname and @surname. When you send your message, each recipient gets a unique copy of the email in which the merge tags are replaced with their details.

Important: Mail merge replaces multi-send mode in Gmail. When composing a message, next to the 'To:' line, click Use mail merge  .

Learn how mail merge works

When you send a message with mail merge turned on, Gmail delivers a unique copy of the message to each recipient individually.

When recipients open your message, they can't check who else you sent the message to. If anyone replies, you'll get their replies in separate threads, which makes it easier to manage conversations.

If you have a large number of recipients, you can link a spreadsheet that contains their contact information. The spreadsheet can also include custom details for each recipient that lets you further personalise your message.

Before you start

Check your eligibility for mail merge

On your computer, you can use mail merge 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 mail merge in Gmail, contact your Google Workspace administrator.

Add recipients directly to your message

You can add recipients directly in the 'To:' line of your message. Gmail uses the recipient's contact information from Google Contacts to personalise each recipient's copy of the email. To make sure that your message uses the correct name, check their name in Google Contacts.

If the recipient isn't in Google Contacts, mail merge populates the first and surname based on what you enter in the 'To:' line. For example, if you enter 'Lisa Rodriguez <[e-mail]>' as a recipient, Gmail uses 'Lisa' as @firstname and 'Rodriguez' as @surname.

Tip: To add multiple recipients, create a label in Google Contacts and group recipients. When you add the label in the 'To:' line in Gmail, the grouped recipients will automatically populate. Learn more about organising contacts with labels.

1. On your computer, open Gmail.
2. In the top left, click Compose.
   • You can also open an existing draft.
3. Go to the 'To:' line.
4. Click Use mail merge .
5. Turn on Mail merge.
6. In your message, enter '@'.
7. Select a merge tag.
   • To filter the list, enter the name of a supported merge tag:
     • For first name, enter '@firstname'
     • For surname, enter '@surname'
     • For full name, enter '@fullname'
     • For email address, enter '@email'
8. To select a merge tag, press Enter.

Add recipients from a spreadsheet to your message

Instead of adding recipients to your message directly, you can load recipients from a spreadsheet where each row contains information for a different recipient. You can use any column from your spreadsheet as a merge tag in Gmail, so you can personalise messages with more information.

Important: Contact information must be in the first tab of your spreadsheet and can only contain text.

1. On your computer, open Gmail.
2. In the top left, click Compose.
   • You can also open an existing draft.
3. Go to the 'To:' line.
4. Click Use mail merge .
5. Turn on Mail merge.
6. Click Add from a spreadsheet.
7. Select a spreadsheet, then click Link.
8. Use the dropdown menus to select the columns from the spreadsheet to determine each recipient's address (e.g. Lisa Rodriguez <[e-mail]>). You can choose the following contact information from your spreadsheet:
   • Email
   • First name
   • Surname (optional)
9. Click Finish.
   • Your spreadsheet is added to the 'To:' line in the message.
10. In your message, enter '@'.
11. Select a merge tag.
    • Merge tags are determined by the column headers in your spreadsheet.
12. To select a merge tag, press Enter.

Tip: When using a spreadsheet for recipient information, check the text characters used in your column headers and email addresses.

• If a column name contains special characters, other than A-Z or numbers, the corresponding merge tag in Gmail will be identified by its position. For example, the first column would be called '@A'.
• If an email address contains special characters, it's considered invalid.

Learn about default values for merge tags

If you have a recipient with missing information for a merge tag, you get an error message. For example, you get an error if you try to email 'Sam <[e-mail]>' and use either the @firstname or @surname merge tag. This is because Gmail can't be sure whether 'Sam' is this person's first name or surname.

In this situation, you can:

• Enter a default value in the error message.
  • For example, for recipients who don't have a first name, 'Hi @firstname' can be 'Hi friend'.
• Go back to the draft and:
  • Add the missing value in the 'To:' line, in Google Contacts, or in the spreadsheet you linked.
  • Remove any recipient with missing values from the 'To:' line or the spreadsheet you linked.

Find your sent messages

To find your sent messages, open the 'Sent' folder in Gmail. In the message, you find a 'Sent with mail merge' banner.

Understand send limits

• Standard Gmail accounts have a daily send limit of 500 outgoing messages.
• Work, school, and Workspace Individual accounts have a daily send limit of 2,000 outgoing messages.

With mail merge, you can:

• Add up to 1,500 recipients in the 'To' line per message
• Send to a maximum of 1,500 recipients per day
  • With mail merge on, you can send one message to 1,000 recipients and another message to 500 recipients.

The 1,500-recipient daily limit for mail merge ensures that you can still send up to 500 normal messages per day and not exceed the 2,000-per-day limit for work, school and Workspace Individual accounts.

There's no limit to the number of unique recipients you can contact per month with mail merge.

Understand Cc and Bcc recipient limits

You can only have one recipient in the 'Cc' or 'Bcc' field in each message with mail merge. Any recipient added to the 'Cc' or 'Bcc' field is copied on each outgoing email.

• For example, if you send a message to 500 recipients with '[e-mail]' in 'Bcc', the '[e-mail]' receives 500 copies of the message. This message would use up 1,000 of your daily send limit because recipients in the 'Cc' or 'Bcc' field also count towards your daily send limit.

Important: If you added recipients using a spreadsheet, you can't include 'Cc' or 'Bcc' recipients with your message.

Unsubscribed recipients

When you turn on mail merge, a unique unsubscribe link is automatically added to the bottom of each email. Recipients can use this link to unsubscribe or resubscribe to your emails.

You get an email notification whenever a recipient unsubscribes or resubscribes to your emails. You can't get a list of all unsubscribed recipients.

After you send a message, in the confirmation box that appears, you find the total recipients who unsubscribed and won't receive the email.

Important: Recipients who unsubscribe can still receive messages sent from you without mail merge turned on or with mail merge from other accounts in the same domain. For example, if they unsubscribe from '[e-mail], they can still receive emails from '[e-mail]'.

If you use a work or school account:

• We won't discard unsubscribe data when a user account is deleted.
• Recipients can't unsubscribe from senders within their organisation.

How to avoid your messages being marked as spam

When you send messages in bulk, it's important to follow best practices that respect your recipient's inbox. Follow your local regulations and Gmail policies.

To run an effective email campaign, messages you send should connect you and your recipients in a meaningful way. Learn more about bulk email best practices.

Understand mail merge limitations

Mail merge can't be used with the following types of messages:

• Reply
• Forward
• Schedule send
• Confidential mode

If you add an attachment, the attachment will be included in each recipient's copy of the message. This can use a large amount of storage.

• For example, if you send a message to 500 recipients with a 10 MB attachment, you would use about 5 GB of your storage.

Tip: To save storage space, upload, rather than attach, the file to Google Drive and link to it in your message. Learn how to share files from Google Drive.

You can't use merge tags in:

• Subject lines
• Hyperlinked text