Apple Mail Automation

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Level 1

9 points

Apple Mail Automation

Hi there,

I'd like to send about 100, almost identical emails - same body copy, same signature, same png attachment, same subject line - but I want each email to be personalised, so that it opens with e.g. "Dear Joe" or "Dear Joanna" etc.

I realise there are services like Mailchimp which could do something like this, but I just want to send a standard looking email from Mail, rather than an email that looks designed / like a marketing email. At the moment I'm just going to copy and paste the subject line (copied to Control Y), then the email copy (copied to Command V), then manually personalise the name, before finally sending.

Is there some way to automate this for a bulk e-mail send in Mail, so that I can set it up and send personalised emails to the whole list at once? I see some very old threads (10-15 years) on this sort of area but I'm hoping things might have changed since then.

This may be a long shot but thank you for any ideas!

Thom

iMac 27″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Oct 25, 2022 7:05 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 25, 2022 7:12 AM in response to thom213

Here is a simple way to automate half of it.

Open Automator, and create a new Quick Action. Use the Get Specified Finder Items action to choose the attachments, the New Mail Message with all the content in it, and the Add Attachments to Front Message action to put it together.

All that is left is to add the destination and the salutation.

It is very easy and saves a lot of time already.

Add a keyboard shortcut to it and it will be even faster.

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Answer 2

Oct 25, 2022 7:15 AM in response to thom213

Here is one that use every week. This one takes the selected pdf files, but as I wrote above, if the attachments are fixed, you can instead make your Quick Action receive nothing, and start it with a Get Specified Finder Items for the attachments, and add them.

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Answer 3

thom213 Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 27, 2022 1:31 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Hi Luis,

Thanks for the suggestion. This is great, but I don't think it actually speeds my specific workflow up, because the email addresses are all on a spreadsheet. Maybe I'm getting this wrong, but I think my fastest workflow is still currently:

Click on email link in spreadsheet to open a blank email addressed to that contact
Control Y paste subject line
Command V paste body copy, including png attachment
Manually enter personalised salutation
Send

Is there really no way I can automate this further on my desktop? In Mailchimp or similar, you can easily make one email template and automatically personalise the salutation, then send to multiple contacts in one send. Is there no equivalent?

Thanks,

Thom

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Apple Mail Automation

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