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How-to Send an email with YAMM - A quick overview
How-to Send an email with YAMM - A quick overview
Introduction
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to provide a quick summary about how to use YAMM for mass emails. If what you want to do is send an email, then I suggest you use the links in the Contents section and skip ahead to that explanation.
Installation
Installation
Pick a Gmail account that you will use to store your documents and send these emails.
Login to the Gmail account you plan to use.
Open another tab and connect to the Google Workspace Marketplace.
Select “Install” and then grant permissions.
Open a Google spreadsheet (gsheet) and look under Extensions to confirm YAMM is available.
Prepare an Email
Prepare an Email
YAMM emails are sent through Gmail. You can include attachments, images, hyperlinks, fonts, and colors as you wish. However, there are some general guidelines that apply to mass mailings that suggest restraint.
You might find it easiest to first create the email as a Word document.
Mass mailings require a footer paragraph in each email. In this footer you are asked to provide your reply-to email address, website address, physical address, and an explanation about how to unsubscribe. An example footer paragraph is shown below.
Attachments are frequently blocked by firewalls. It is better to post the attachments onto a website and add links in the email rather than using attachments.
Remember, many people view their emails through their cell phones and tablets. Fonts do not always translate reliably to different devices. It is safest to choose the standard fonts.
If images are included, be sure to add “alt text” so anyone who cannot access the image can determine what purpose the image serves.
Once the document is ready, open a new draft email.
Add the subject line, but leave the “To”, “CC”, and “BCC” fields empty.
Paste the contents of the document into the draft email.
Many emails include automatically inserted signature lines. Evaluate if this signature line is still relevant or if it now duplicates text already included within the document.
Proof read to ensure the draft email is correct.
Then minimize the draft email.
Example Footer Paragraph
Example Footer Paragraph
This email came from the Western Regions Committee of Nar-Anon Family Groups. Our email address is wrcnfg@gmail.com. If you no longer wish to receive emails from our committee, please reply and ask to be removed from our mailing list. For legal compliance, our physical address is Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Smalltown, KS 12345, USA. If you are interested in learning more about our service, please check the Western Regions Committee website at bit.ly/WRCNFG.
(Note the physical address in this example is fictional.)
Prepare Your Contact List
Prepare Your Contact List
Collect all of the email addresses into a spreadsheet.
Add the columns you need. All that YAMM needs is a single column with email addresses. However, the spreadsheet can contain whatever columns you might need for other purposes.
Keep this spreadsheet as the starting place for future emails.
Copy the spreadsheet and save it as a Google Sheet (gsheet).
Send an Email
Send an Email
Open the Google Sheet that you want to use for this specific email campaign.
Select “Extensions” from the toolbar menu.
Find “Yet Another Mail Merge” in the list of extensions.
Click on the option to “Start Mail Merge”.
Have patience.
When prompted, verify that YAMM has found the spreadsheet column that contains the email addresses.
If the “Sender Name” is not what you would like, then correct it.
Find the draft email in the “Email Template” dropdown menu.
Decide if you want to “Track emails opened, clicked or bounced”. Some firewalls will block emails that include tracking. Some firewalls will let the email through but block the responses that help with the tracking. When sending to multiple countries, I recommend disabling tracking.
I recommend first sending a test email. That test email will be sent to your inbox. Open the test email and if there are any problems, go to the draft email and make changes.
Repeat the test if necessary.
Then click on “Send”.
YAMM will check the list of email addresses and notify you if there are duplicates or improperly formatted addresses in the list. Correct those errors, and then try again.
Have patience.
Cleaning Up
Cleaning Up
When all of the emails have been sent, the YAMM window will give you an option to close the window. Click “Close”.
The spreadsheet with the email addresses will now have a new column that will show which emails were sent.
If you enable tracking, then the “Email Sent” information will gradually be updated with new status information. These updates seem to occur fairly often for an hour or so, and then appear to become a once-a-day refresh. Do not delete this spreadsheet.
The draft email is no longer needed. I recommend adding yourself to the “To” field and send it to yourself so you have it in your files.
Note: I recommend you then save the gsheet as an Excel document. If your file is damaged and you restore from a backup, a gsheet is just a hyperlink pointing to a place that no longer exists. The Excel file will be self contained.
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