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1 YEAR REVIEW: GMail Mail Merge (Mass Email Sending)

gmail Image from workspace.google.com.

What is Mail Merge or Mass Email Sending?

Mail Merge is best known from the Microsoft Office Suites where you can send an email to a list of contacts from a spreadsheet. The template for the email is first created in Microsoft Word that contains identifiers to prepare sections to be replaced with content from a spreadsheet's columns that you want to appear in an email (ie @firstname for a greeting to start the email). When the email is sent it is only addressed to that individual and the other contacts on that list appearing in the spreadsheet are not shared by any of the recipients.

Mail merge is commonly used for email marketing campaigns, however, in the era of social media, email marketing seems to have faded a little but emails themselves still hold quite a bit of relevance considering that emails are still one of the standards of communication for receiving updates, receiving receipts, verifying an account, etc. For companies of any size, besides having a social media presence, utilizing (mass) emails can also provide a significant role with communicating for potential and existing customers.

I've been a user of Google Workspaces (previously called GSuites) since 2013 both for personal and professional use and I've been using the "built-in" Mail Merge feature for a little over a year now. This email that you received is an example of the Mail Merge feature. The reason I made this review post is because a recipient wanted to learn more about my experience with the feature since this person is considering using it as part of their workflow. By extension, this post could help you determine if it is right for you. Full disclosure, I pay for Google Workspaces, this is NOT a sponsored review, and NOT written with AI. All thoughts are my own.

SCOPE

  • Who is this review for? The audience for this review is intended for marketers who only needs just a little technical knowledge.
  • The review focuses on general user experience and limitations.
  • This post is not a full tutorial.

BACKGROUND

This goes without saying, besides the intended reason for writing this review, I should also preface that Google Workspace's ecosystem is incredibly robust regardless if you use the free version or any of the paid tiers. In simple terms, the paid tiers of Google Workspace typically provides more capacity with the Mail Merge feature when compared to the free tier1, otherwise the free tier is sufficient for many use cases because it is already feature rich albeit with some limitations. Regardless of these limitations, you will still be able to do quite a bit, including sending mass emails as long as you do it manualy1.

GENERAL FEATURES OF MAIL MERGE

For house cleaning purposes, here is quick overview of what to expect when using Gmail for mass emails:

Included Features

Contact info

  • No third party plugins, as these are "built-in" features included with a paid Google account2.
  • Mail merge starts on paid Individual Workspaces available with some limited features (ie email design templates).
  • Auto link to spreadsheet.
  • Automatic unsubscribe link included.
  • Scheduled email sending and saved drafts (Gmail).
  • Custom Email address (ie: yourname@yourcompany.com; Gmail).

Manual Setup (May require technical knowledge.)

  • Non-spam requirements are outside of the scope of this review.
  • Email sender authentication (not built in) will need to be done manually - outside the scope of this blog post3.
  • Sending Text SMS via email is possible but outside the scope of this post4.

Besides what is listed above, if you are familiar with the Workspaces Apps and development, you may be able to extend further capabilities beyond what is currently available. In most cases, the built-in standard features for the paid tiers are going to be more than enough to accomplish a desired purpose.

GOOGLE WORKSPACE

We can't talk about mail merge for GMail without talking about Google Workspace. Google Workspace is first and foremost productivity tools designed for remote collaboration5. The apps that are included, but not limited to whether you have a free tier are: Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, (Spread)Sheets, Draw, Slides, etc... Each one of these apps integrate seamlessly with each other and can be collaborated with other users. This is no different when using Mail Merge, where Gmail, Drive, and Sheets integrate with each other. The option to use the other applications in Mail Merge can be accomplished. Mail merge is a feature that becomes available after purchasing a paid tier.

MAIL MERGE

To better understand mail merge with GMail, we need to look at some of the steps to creating an email campaign for multiple recipients. You will notice that several apps interact each other that was mentioned earlier. Here is an example workflow of how to draft a mail merge email.

  1. The first step is to decide on what type of emails you want to send and limit the amount of content that will be sent. If the emails are going to be recurring, it's best that content follows a specific structure to prevent constant modifications . This can often be referred to as normalization (of data). The reason for this is because the mail merge emails are templates and they link to a specific spreadsheet with the content. The great thing is that you can create multiple templates.
  2. After deciding on your normalized content, you are ready to draft an email in Google Docs based on the specific structure you decided on.
  3. Create a spreadsheet with the content. You can name the headings whatever you want but you want to make sure to include the recipient's name and email. Copy/Paste what you wrote in Google Docs in the cells, for each row, under the column with the appropriate heading. Keep in mind the heading names on the first row will correspond with a variable declared in the email template. In order to make it easier, DO NOT include spaces, ie DON'T DO first name instead use firstname,first-name, or first_name, when naming the heading of a column. Think of each row as each recipient's message so you can customize the message for each individual by changing the content in any of the cells.:
    4. firstname email b_heading2titletranslated para1 para2
    John john@john_email.com This is the heading. This is paragraph 1. This is paragraph 2.
    Jane jane@jane_email.com This is the heading. This is paragraph 1. This is paragraph 2.
  4. If you have standard Google Workspace or higher tier subscription, you can create email designs based on templates that Gmail already provides (Images shows variables identified with @some-text that correspond to a column on a spreadsheet. In this instance my naming conventions is @columnSection_EmailSection_ifTranslated_organizationShortFormName.).

    5. Email template

    biz

  5. Once you have the spreadsheet with the appropriate information, you area ready to link your spreadsheet with the email template.

    6. biz0

POSITIVES

TIME The most time consuming aspect of this whole process is actually writing the email. Once you create the template(s) essentially, the design process is quick, and in most instances, you are just swapping pictures that are related to the topic that is being discussed. Because even if you are copy/pasting content from Google Docs to the Sheets, it's only several seconds of time.

QUOTA The number of recipients per day using mail merge is 1,500 that roughly comes out to 45,000 emails that can be sent per month. This is a good limit even if you have a larger number of recipients.

PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH SIMPLICITY Once everything is setup, mail merge is simple to use. It has guardrails to prevent mistakes and to keep the process from ever being to complicated to perform. For example, before ever sending a "live" email, you are always prompted tested your draft first.

MATURE ECOSYSTEM The Google development ecosystem is very robust that is both for their suite of productivity tools and 3rd party developers who create/optomize applications specific to Google Workspace. Besides, constant updates to the tools, they've included numerous features throughout the years, mail merge was one of them.

NEGATIVES

LIMIT As aforementioned, mail merge uses "productivity through simplicity" where the experience is very guided. If you are not too familiar with the suite of tools or have limited development experience in their ecosystem, you may feel that it could be slightly restrictive. In many instances, these sorts of limitations can be resolved with an assortment of Chrome browser plugins. As an organization, it's up to you to determine if plugins are the solution.

OFFLINE First and foremost, Google Workspace is an internet based service and requires internet to connect to Google servers. If a good portion of the strategy is to be offline to use productivity tools, meaning, not using internet, this could pose an issue. To allow offline capabilities, it will need to be enabled in Chrome. If you have an offline strategy, Google Drive enables the ability to download files in multiple different formats.

COMPETITION

The direct competitor to Google Workspace mail merge would be Intuit's MailChimp. Price parity is about the same with the different tiers, MailChimp being specific to sending emails compared to mail merge being a feature included with the suite of tools. One would imagine that MailChimp would integrate with other Intuit products (Quickbooks), albeit with some costs associated with it.

Want to learn more about including Google Workspaces into your workflow?

Did you know that the paid Google Workspaces has email marketing built in?!

CONCLUSION

I went with Google Workspace as my go to for mail merge capabilities along with having an offline strategy. Considering the vast ecosystem and development tools available, the mail merge feature is only a small segment of what I use Google Workspace for but it plays a significant role in communication. I have an offline Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software that uses very low resources, should the internet not be available. Transferring contact data from offline to Google Workspace is incredibly easy and prevents as much exposure of sensitive information out in the wild.

One notable feature that is not apparent and you probably wouldn't even know about if you received the email promoting this post, is that the emails are automatically translated to the preferred language of each person before they are received. This is a feature that I built into GMail mail merge. This was in response to several recipients who receive my emails and reside in or outside the United States who's first language is not English. It is an extended feature I built in early when I first implemented mail merge in my workflow. Another key aspect is often times we have disparate number of tools that don't seamlessly integrate together. Since, Google Workspace is very user friendly and constantly receives updates that goes further to simplifying how to use it, implementing Google Workspace with my offline strategy has little to no friction.

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Other examples of features:

For inquiries, etc, integration: Email: pransbottom@avrstory.net Mobile:774-328-7949

VERSIONS

2026v.0.1.1: cleanup 14Jun26: table lines, picture centering/organizing

2026v.0.1.0: init

REFERENCES

  1. Auto emails can be sent without every using the paid tier, however the feature will need to created manually using Google App Scripts (GAS). To build one, you can start with some source code available for free: Google App Scripts: auto E-mailer using Google Forms ↩ ↩2

  2. Google Mail Merge ↩

  3. When a mail servers receive an email from an automated process, the sender's email immediately gets flagged for being spam, as a result in most instances, automatically get placed in the spam folder. Email authentication, confirms the email sender and will not be flagged as spam. Irregardless, if you use Gmail or any type of service that sends mass emails, authentication will need be enabled automatically or will need to be done manually. For Gmail, it will need to be done manually (as of this post). ↩

  4. Sending SMS through Gmail can be done individually or automatically. ↩

  5. I would even argue Google was the first to popularize remote collaboration tools since the Google tools were hosted online rather than locally on the PC. ↩

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