Merging Fields into the Body of an Email

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Gemma Atkinson
Gemma Atkinson
Seventh Anniversary Photogenic 5 Likes First Comment
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hello,


I am wanting to customize my email with more fields than just the First and Last Name, Spouse etc into my email solication. In the past i have exported the data into an excel spreadsheet and merged that information into a MS Word document and be able to print our letters that are person specific. This year we are wanting to save some trees and send emails instead. My question is... Am i able to merge fields into the body of the email from an excel spreadsheet?


Thanks 

 
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  • Brent Troth 2
    Brent Troth 2
    Tenth Anniversary 100 Likes 10 Comments Photogenic
    I would love to see this functionality as well.  Being able to pull gift information into emails - i.e. actually send gift acknowledgments via email would be awesome.
  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy
    Tenth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 1000 Comments Name Dropper
    Search the OLX Idea Bank for "merge fields" and find 2 pages of ideas around this.
  • Catherine Burns
    Catherine Burns
    Tenth Anniversary 100 Comments 100 Likes Photogenic

    Gemma Atkinson:

    Hello,


    I am wanting to customize my email with more fields than just the First and Last Name, Spouse etc into my email solication. In the past i have exported the data into an excel spreadsheet and merged that information into a MS Word document and be able to print our letters that are person specific. This year we are wanting to save some trees and send emails instead. My question is... Am i able to merge fields into the body of the email from an excel spreadsheet?


    Thanks 

     

    Online Express cannot do this yet so we don't use it for email. But you can still send emails doing it the old way. Using an Excel data file and a Word document merge template you can mail merge to email, instead of printing letters. This will merge into the body of the email (it won't send attachments) and you can customise it the same way as a printed letter mail merge. We do this all the time for regular giving welcome letters and include gift amount, start date, frequency, payment method etc. If you want to include images, logos, signatures etc then I recommend you set up the Word document as a table, otherwise the images can move in unpredictable ways when it is emailed.


    Test it by emailing yourself a few times before sending to all. You can break your data file into smaller segments if you have a lot to send. I have emailed several thousand at once but prefer to keep it under 1000 at a time if possible. Because it sends one email to each recipient it can take a while for them all to be sent.





     

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