360989 - Add support for 'Mail Merge': Send one personalized mail to multiple single To: recipients

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Matt Dudziak]

From the wiki:
G. Seeing as it's a wishlist (dreaming here), would LOVE to see Mach5 Mailer type "merge" feature -- ability to send multiple recipient personalized messages that have personalized subject line, message content (plain-text and html) and also attachment list on individual message basis. Data source may be based on entries in the address book, a linked ODBC database or spreadsheet. However, I think this is a major departure from standard usage of Eudora and would happily keep using Mach5 Mailer as a separate product. But hey, it's a wishlist. Even basic personalization would be a good integrated add-on.


If you would like to see Mail Merge capability in Penelope, vote for this bug.

Comment 1

[Joseph W Donahue]

NO!  I vote NO.  I don't want to risk having my emails filtered because some twit used Eudora/Penelop to compose and send spam to half the planet.  I don't know, maybe that isn't as big a risk as I am supposing it could be.  Just wanted to point out that it should be evaluated carefully.

Comment 2

[Bruce England]

Hi Matt:
Can you elaborate re what you mean by "merge"? What I'd like to see myself, and what I can't do today, is merge existing emails in my inbox so I don't have to maintain related messages as one. I'd like to have the option of either dragging messages in as attachments into a core message or merging messages inline. Is this the kind of feature you're after here?
Thanks!
Bruce

Comment 3

[Matt Dudziak]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Hi Matt:
> Can you elaborate re what you mean by "merge"? What I'd like to see myself, and
> what I can't do today, is merge existing emails in my inbox so I don't have to
> maintain related messages as one. I'd like to have the option of either
> dragging messages in as attachments into a core message or merging messages
> inline. Is this the kind of feature you're after here?
> Thanks!
> Bruce
> 


No, that is not what I mean by mail merge, though that is an interesting idea that could probably be combined with threading.

My definition of Mail Merge is where you can create a form letter of sorts and fill in the personalized data from something like a spreadsheet or text file, or the Address Book. For example, you could create a 'template' like:

Dear <<FIRST_NAME>>

How are things in <<CITY>>? Our records indicate that your subscription to <<MAGAZINE_NAME>> is set to expire on <<EXPIRATION_DATE>>. We'd hate for you to miss out on......


Then you could send this message to multiple people and have the stuff inside <<>> replaced with data from elsewhere, and have each message sent individually.

I believe you can do this type of thing in Word now via Outlook. 

Matt

Comment 4

[Bruce England]

That sounds interesting, too. I create templates in Eudora and Outlook to do this kind of thing, but I still have to manually tweak the placeholders. Guess I'll add my request as a separate feature request then.
Thanks!
Bruce

Comment 5

[Matt Dudziak]

Assigning to Thunderbird as this is not unique to Penelope.

Comment 7

[Simon]

Yes, nice request.  I've also looked for this ability in the past.

I found the Mailtweak Addon which does personalized messages (although it's probably not as smooth/automated as it could be).

http://mailtweak.mozdev.org/

Simon.

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Duplicate bug 596891 mentions another more recent addon [1] that adds exactly this functionality.

Also comes with a nice and more realistic description of what we might try for TB:

(From Bug 596891 Comment 0)
> I don't want them to see a) the other recipients or b) that BCC was used.
> What I'd like to have is a way to say "send a copy of this mail to each of
> the To:s recipient with only one recipient per copy" pretty much like what
> Mail Merge [1] does in "mass mail" mode. Optionally, the individual sent
> copies should be grouped together in the sent folder.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/it/thunderbird/addon/47144/