Personalised mass-mailing with Thunderbird

With Thunderbird it is possible to send personalised mass-mailings. That means that you can create an almost unlimited number of mails with roughly the same content but for example starting with the address (Hello Ms ...) containing the actual name. Also it is possible to define individual attachments for each email.

This short guide just explains the way we did it in some cases with a CSV file. According to the documentation it is also possible to use the built-in address book as source for the recipients' data, and there may be dozens of other cool tricks.

• 1. Install the Thunderbird Addon "Mail Merge"

• 2. Prepare an .csv document containing all necessary information. The first line has to contain column headers, for example EMAIL and NAME. Example:

NAME;EMAIL;ATTACHMENT
Mr Mueller;mueller@example.com;file_mueller.pdf
Ms Doe;doe@example.net;file_doe.pdf
Mrs Schneider;schneider@example.org;file_schneider.pdf

For the whole message you can now use the variables NAME, EMAIL and ATTACHMENT. Just define new columns in the CSV files if you need more.

• 3. Create a new message with Thunderbird. As recipient insert

{{NAME}} <{{EMAIL}}>

• 4. In the email's body you can use the variables as well. For example, start with

Dear {{NAME}},

• 5. To actually save or send the mails, click on "File" and "Mail Merge" in the new message's window. This will open a dialog with more options.
  • As source, define "CSV".
  • Choose the sending mode you want to have. I chose "send later" to save all emails in the queue first and send them manually then.

  • You can define attachments. For example if you have a slightly different attachment for each email, just put them in one folder and give them the same names you defined in the CSV column ATTACHMENT. Then you can for example use in the field /home/user/massmailing/{{ATTACHMENT}} to automatically choose the correct attachment for each generated mail.

  • The next fields contain the information for the used CSV files. Define the file, encoding and delimiter letters.

  • You can also define more batch actions. Start and Stop define the line number (always count +1 because the first line is column title!). "Pause" defines the amount of seconds between each mail. I made good experiences with 7-10 seconds. When I chose to send in batches, I chose the option "send now" – I don't know what happens exactly when you choose "send later" or "save as draft"...

  • If you click OK, the chosen action will be taken (send now, later or save as draft). In each case the mail will be saved in the template folder (if you defined one). That's cool because then you don't have to retype all variables if something went wrong.

That should be everything.

Links

• Documentation and infos: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/mail-merge/