How to Create a Personalized Mail Merge in Outlook

Are you sending out a mass email to inform a contact group about a listing or open house? Don’t let your emails get labeled as junk! You should be using a personalized mail merge to send out messages to groups. This sends out one message per person which will help you get your message past junk filters and not end up in their junk mailboxes!

Follow these steps to create a personalized mail merge in Outlook 2013:

1. Click “Contacts” in your Outlook inbox.
2. Select the contacts you are mailing.
3. Hold down the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard and click to select contacts individually or hold the “Shift” key and click the first and last contact to select a whole group.
4. In the “Home” tab in your top menu bar, select “Mail Merge”.
5. In the pop-up Mail Merge window, pay attention to the first selection option “Contacts” and make sure that “Only selected contacts” is selected
6. Then in the last selection under “Merge Options” change the “Merge to” selection to “E-mail”.
7. Type in your subject line in the “Message subject line” field that appears.
8. Double check your selections and click “OK”.
9. Microsoft Word will launch, giving you all the power of Word to now draft your email message.
10. Start with “Dear” or your preferred greeting and select “Insert Merge Field” at the top to insert a “First_Name”.
11. Draft the body text of your email message.
12. Don’t forget to insert your email signature! Because Word does not automatically generate your signature, go back to Outlook to create “New Email” and select the signature you’re using. Copy and paste the signature into your Word document.
13. Check your message for spelling and formatting (double spacing).
14. Now that your email message is ready, click “Preview Results” and see how your message would look with each contact record’s data inserted. Click the right and left arrows to view each contact.
15. Click “Finish & Merge”, select “Send Email Messages…” and click “OK” to send out your messages- one message per person!

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