Thunderbird and MailMerge

Mozilla Thunderbird have quite a few good extensions. One of them is MailMerge. This extension allows for using Thunderbird to send personalized emails. Of course there are some rules you need to obey to for this to work. But here is a quick how-to for sending personalized emails to a group of friends or colleagues.



I use this for sending group emails to my colleagues, and it looks like I have taken the time to write each and one of them a personal letter since they are the only recipient for the mail. (Each mail will be created and sent to one recipient.)

Sending an email to a few hundred persons will take a long time, and you might end up looking like a spammer for your email server unless you divide your transfers in batches.

What is needed for this to work?

Thunderbird with the MailMerge extension. (MailMerge extension is found here.)
A fairly up-to-date Addressbook or a CSV-file with the necessary info.

What will not work?

LDAP is NOT supported.

Common errors...

Check to see if your address book contains the necessary fields. Most used address entries should have FirstName and LastName (Not only FullName). If you want to add Mr. or Mrs. then you can add these fields to one of the self-defined fields. But make sure you are consistent about what you put in each self-defined field in the addressbook.

Using the addressbook...

1. Create your email in thunderbird and replace the fields you want with one of the following field-names :
• {{FirstName}}
  {{LastName}}
  {{DisplayName}}
  {{NickName}}
  {{PrimaryEmail}}
  {{HomePhone}}
  {{WorkPhone}}
  {{FaxNumber}}
  {{PagerNumber}}
  {{CellularNumber}}
  {{HomeAddress}}
  {{HomeCity}}
  {{HomeState}}
  {{HomeZipCode}}
  {{HomeCountry}}
  {{WorkAddress}}
  {{WorkCity}}
  {{WorkState}}
  {{WorkZipCode}}
  {{WorkCountry}}
  {{BirthDay}}
  {{BirthMonth}}
  {{BirthYear}}
  {{Custom1}}
  {{Custom2}}
  {{Custom3}}
  {{Custom4}}
  {{Notes}}
  


2. Add the recipients to your email
3. Go to File -> MailMerge
4. Adjust what needs to be adjusted and click send.

For more information regarding CSV-files and the options this extension offers you should visit this extensions web-page.