How to send bulk emails for free

Mail Merge tool ⚡

Hey 👋 I’m Caleb — a financial copywriter from London.

In this publication, you’ll find everything you need to know about copywriting and how to make money writing online.

I also write about SEO, AI and other relevant writing topics.

If you’re new here, check out this post below 👇👇

Start here 💸

Back to the article 😊

---

So I’ve just discovered that you can send bulk emails using only Gmail and Google Sheets.

I thought you needed a paid email tool like Klaviyo or Mailchimp to do this, which start at like £20 a month (RIP OFF) unless you want to send the emails with the huge watermark at the bottom.

I don’t want any fancy graphics, just a glorified DM basically, so I didn’t really feel like paying. Also, emails with this Google Sheets method don’t get sent to the spam folder, provided you don’t send an obviously spammy message, which is a risk for these paid tools for some reason.

My outreach method covered below is even quicker now 👇

Here’s how to do it.

1. How to set it up

Go to this link:

https://developers.google.com/apps-script/samples/automations/mail-merge

Click on ‘Make a copy’.

You’ll get this screen, click on ‘Make a copy’ again.

You’ll get a copy of the Mail Merge tool downloaded to your Google Sheets.

2. Configure your list

You should now have a Google Sheet list like this:

You can delete the Description, Discount Code, and Discount Amount sections, we don’t need them.

But DO NOT delete the Recipient or Email Sent sections.

Highlight them so you don’t forget:

Also note that I added in ‘Organisation’ as a category, as I want to have this in the email that I’ll send.

3. Prepare your email

Now go over to your email.

Mine is calebhintoncopywriter@gmail.com.

Write your cold email, but replace the parts highlighted with curly bracket parameters:

You can use my template:

—

{{Recipient}}

—

Need any help with your content {{First name}}?

—

Hey {{First name}},

Hope you're well.

Do you need any help with your content strategy at {{Organisation}}?

Let me know.

Caleb

—

4. Send a test

As you might have noticed, the parameters inside the curly brackets — {{First name}} — correspond to the Google Sheet.

Any typos will mess this up, so double check you have everything spelled the name (watch out for Organisation/Organization, or First Name/First name).

To be safe, just copy and paste from the Google Sheet straight into Gmail.

Here’s my test ready. I’m sending it to my personal email (caleb.a.hinton@gmail.com):

Now go to ‘Mail Merge’ at the top:

Select the email you want to send from.

Ignore this:

Go to Advanced and click “Go to Gmail/Sheets mail merge (unsafe)”.

This tool was made by a Google developer, it is safe don’t worry.

Click ‘Allow’.

Now go back to ‘Mail Merge’.

So from here, you’ll get this popup:

Go back to your email drafts, and copy and paste the subject line:

This is telling the Google Sheet which email to use.

Once you click ‘OK’, this will send it.

If everything is right, you should send a nice email through to all contacts on the list.

If it comes through wonky, check for typos.

5. Send for real

Now you can put in all your real leads and send to all.

You can add more parameters if you want, such as their position in the company.

Maybe you could add in something like “I understand you’re the {{Position}} at {{Organisation}}”.

You’ll see the ‘Email Sent’ column ping up once the emails have been sent. This is the one I used earlier this week.

I put in 117 rows of details (that I got from the paid email list) after this and hit send.

No responses as of yet.

Although I now know that about 10 leads are on maternity leave now, and 10 more are OOO…

---

Let me know if you found this guide helpful, and I’ll be happy to post more outreach guides in future 😊