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Streak Brings Mail Merge to Gmail

38 points by OmarIsmail 13y ago

alanh 13y ago
Careful relying on Gmail when sending bulk email. I have seen a lot of cases where that does not end well — your recipients won’t always get those emails, and your account can be automatically suspended. ⁂ That said, I think it’s a useful thing! I don’t know why mail merge isn’t a lot more readily available. I don’t know why my email clients don’t allow me to list a bunch of email addresses as if they were all in their own “To:” fields; that is, multiple recipients with BCC-like blindness to each other.
- OmarIsmail 13y ago
  For your first point, this is why right now we've instituted a pretty low limit of 50. You can obviously do it multiple times, but Gmail sets a daily limit of 500 and so we don't want to make it too easy to hit that. In regards to the second point, that's exactly what this is. You're right that it's strange it doesn't exist, and that's an opportunity for us :)
  - Synergyse 13y ago
    Great work Omar, Aleem and team! Google Apps Business/Education customers enjoy a 2000 daily limit btw :) http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=166852 http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=16685...
hajrice 13y ago
Honestly, this looks very complex. I don't see why someone would use this over a tool like Toutapp.com ?
- alooPotato 13y ago
  The primary benefit here is that you can send mass emails straight from Gmail. Would love to know which parts were confusing so we can improve the flow. I don't believe this is possible from tout (although they do have a great product overall).
fredley 13y ago
Could you move your popout sidebar to the other side? It's interfering with the scrollbar, which is very frustrating.
imkevinxu 13y ago
Fantastic job Streak! Finally I can mail merge within my existing workflow, can't wait to try this out. Agreed that the blog post makes this look more complex than it should be but after reading through it carefully, most of the screenshots are for edge cases or unique features. The basic "replace first names and send" is pretty straightforward, maybe just highlight that in a separate blog post?
- alooPotato 13y ago
  Thanks and great point - simplifying post now....
joelandren 13y ago
I was looking to do this a few months ago and after some web search found a solution. I'll check this out next time.
webwanderings 13y ago
I thought this was already done using Google script and sheets. I tend to recall an old blog post from labnol.org specifying exact steps without installing anything.
asah 13y ago
go streak!!
gojomo 13y ago
At the April Berlin Hack'n'Tell, Benjamin Kampmann ('ligthyear') demoed mail merge from a Google Spreadsheet to Gmail using just Google Apps Script. See the gist at: https://gist.github.com/ligthyear/1838132 https://gist.github.com/ligthyear/1838132

38 points by OmarIsmail 13y ago

alanh 13y ago

Careful relying on Gmail when sending bulk email. I have seen a lot of cases where that does not end well — your recipients won’t always get those emails, and your account can be automatically suspended. ⁂ That said, I think it’s a useful thing! I don’t know why mail merge isn’t a lot more readily available. I don’t know why my email clients don’t allow me to list a bunch of email addresses as if they were all in their own “To:” fields; that is, multiple recipients with BCC-like blindness to each other.

OmarIsmail 13y ago
For your first point, this is why right now we've instituted a pretty low limit of 50. You can obviously do it multiple times, but Gmail sets a daily limit of 500 and so we don't want to make it too easy to hit that. In regards to the second point, that's exactly what this is. You're right that it's strange it doesn't exist, and that's an opportunity for us :)
- Synergyse 13y ago
  Great work Omar, Aleem and team! Google Apps Business/Education customers enjoy a 2000 daily limit btw :) http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=166852 http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=16685...

hajrice 13y ago

Honestly, this looks very complex. I don't see why someone would use this over a tool like Toutapp.com ?

alooPotato 13y ago
The primary benefit here is that you can send mass emails straight from Gmail. Would love to know which parts were confusing so we can improve the flow. I don't believe this is possible from tout (although they do have a great product overall).

fredley 13y ago

Could you move your popout sidebar to the other side? It's interfering with the scrollbar, which is very frustrating.

imkevinxu 13y ago

Fantastic job Streak! Finally I can mail merge within my existing workflow, can't wait to try this out. Agreed that the blog post makes this look more complex than it should be but after reading through it carefully, most of the screenshots are for edge cases or unique features. The basic "replace first names and send" is pretty straightforward, maybe just highlight that in a separate blog post?

alooPotato 13y ago
Thanks and great point - simplifying post now....

joelandren 13y ago

I was looking to do this a few months ago and after some web search found a solution. I'll check this out next time.

webwanderings 13y ago

I thought this was already done using Google script and sheets. I tend to recall an old blog post from labnol.org specifying exact steps without installing anything.

asah 13y ago

go streak!!

gojomo 13y ago

At the April Berlin Hack'n'Tell, Benjamin Kampmann ('ligthyear') demoed mail merge from a Google Spreadsheet to Gmail using just Google Apps Script. See the gist at: https://gist.github.com/ligthyear/1838132 https://gist.github.com/ligthyear/1838132