Send blind carbon copy email but address to each person individually

Question

I want to send an single email to multiple email addresses using blind carbon copy. However, I want the first line of the email to say "Hi [insert name]". Each person who receives the email has there name at the top of the email. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Not the way you describe it - you would need to generate a separate email for each recipient.

This is due to the way email delivery works. Mail servers don't [as a rule] do the type of substitutions you are looking to do, thus the work needs to be "handed off" to your client, which needs to generate individual messages, which means BCC does not work. (Conversely, if a mail server gets a single email with a BCC field it directs copies of the email appropriately).

Answer 2

I believe what you're looking for is mail merge. Go to https://encrypted.google.com/ and enter your email program and/or service plus mail merge.

For example, enter "how to mail merge" and you will get a variety of suggestions.

If you use Gmail enter "Gmail mail merge" and you will get options for that. If you use the CHROME browser with Gmail, try "mail merge chrome add ons" and you will get Chrome browser specific plug-ins that will assist with the job.

If you use an old-school mail program, enter it plus "mail merg"e (like "seamonkey mail merge" or "thunderbird mail merge" or, heaven help you, "outlook mail merge").

The fancy way, and one that will cost you but is fully featured, is Mail Chimp (http://mailchimp.com/features/). If you have large lists, subscriptions to manage and are making money off your mailings, this is the one to try.

Answer 3

One way you could possibly do this is to send a message in HTML format, and then embed JavaScript that would generate the salutation dynamically.  I believe that this isn’t a workable solution for a few reasons:

• I expect that most mail readers block execution of JavaScript in email messages (because it smells like a way of sending malware).
• Even if your JavaScript did run, it might not have access to the local information that it needs (i.e., the user’s (recipient’s) full name).
• You might need to write your code based on the recipient’s email name; e.g.,
                          if (email_name == "davidgo") display "Hi David";
  So your code would contain the names of all the recipients, which would (theoretically) allow any recipient to see the complete list.  This, of course, defeats the purpose of using bcc.
• If you send a message to Mike, and Mike forwards it to Nick, saying, “Look at this message Luciano sent me,” it might then say “Hi Nick” when Nick read it.

The closest you’re likely to be able to come to getting the effect you want is to

1. Post the body of your message on a web server, and then
2. Send each person an individual email that says “Hi [person’s name]” and then links to the message on the web.

Answer 4

I'm confused as to why you'd want this? Bcc: is used so that To: and Cc: users don't know the Bcc: users are included - without needing to send multiple emails, however if you want to customize each email, there has to be multiple individual emails. There's no merit when sending an email to an individual account to use Bcc: over To: (they know they're on the list... they got the email). Note also that an email that isn't explicitly To: an account has a higher chance of being considered spam.

To do this you need to build an individual email for each user.

The BCC: Way

To: <noreply@whatever>
BCC: <theirEMail>

Hi <name> ...

The To: Way

To: <theirEmail>

Hi <name> ...

In both cases a user will receive a customized email, the first time norepy@whatever will also receive the email (and once for every email sent) . In the second case the email goes directly to the user and only the user.

Tools

Alright so how do you build N emails to N accounts? You can use mail merge (Office) or a scripting language, or a full programming language.

Answer 5

Mail Merge.

I know this is a really old topic, but for the sake of getting the information out there for the next guy, check out this link:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-mail-merge-to-send-personalized-email-messages-to-your-email-address-list-6ac6b411-ac8d-48b3-8bcb-588b460c18ff

It does exactly what you want it to do.