While using Mail Merge for letters and envelopes can be very helpful in sharing your ministry with your contacts, sending more personalized e-mail messages can be an effective tool for communicating prayer needs and other quick updates. This tutorial guides you through creating a simple e-mail merge to a group of contacts. This tutorial was created using Microsoft Word 2007. For Word 2003, you may need to search for the buttons shown.
This topic covers how to send an e-mail merge, which sends a separate e-mail for each recipient. There is a separate topic for a Mass E-mail, which sends ONE e-mail message with multiple recipients.
Read More > Create Mass E-mail
Tutorial: E-mail Merge
1.Select the group you want to send this e-mail message to. In this example, the Current Group is a list of contacts who receive regular prayer updates.
2.Select E-mail merge
3.When the Mail Merge dialog box appears, change the document type to Form Letters (e-mail).
4.Press the <OK> button.
This opens Microsoft Word and send your contacts to be the source data for the merge. The status bar will say "Opening Document" but it is actually creating a New document.
5.Create your e-mail message.
6.Where you want the recipient's first name to appear, insert the merge code for Greeting.
a.Place cursor before the comma.
b.Press the <Insert Merge Field> button.
c.Select the Greeting field.
d.Press the <Insert> button.
7.Press the <Finish Mail Merge> button.
Select "Send e-mail Messages" from the menu. Word will open the merge box.
8.Write a subject line.
9.Press the <OK> button.
Microsoft Word will open your e-mail software and send the messages.
More on e-mail Merge
You cannot attach a document (such as a PDF newsletter) to an e-mail sent this way.
•To send a newsletter, you could use the <Create Mass E-mail> feature. This will copy all of the e-mail addresses into your clipboard, and you then paste them into the Blind Copy of your message. Then compose your e-mail message and attach your newsletter. Unfortunately, using this method you will not be able to personalize the messages.
Log History for e-mail messages sent.
•Once you press the start the merge process, you leave TntMPD and do not come back. To log the history for sending this e-mail message, return to TntMPD after sending the message and log the history.
When a contact has more than one preferred e-mail address, the same greeting will go to all of the preferred e-mail addresses.
•If a couple has two preferred e-mail addresses (meaning both of them are used when an e-mail is sent), then both e-mail addresses will receive the same e-mail message with the same greeting.
•In this example, both George and Jane would both receive the e-mail message, and the Greeting (if inserted) would say, "Dear George and Jane".
