New Feature: Send follow-up mail merge campaigns in Gmail

By Ajay Goel in email follow-ups Gmail Tips and Tricks New Features January 6, 2016

Note: This post teaches you how to manually send a follow-up email campaign based on actions taken on a previous campaign. Like sending to everyone who clicked on the last email, or replied to the last email. If you’re looking for automatic follow-up emails (drip sequence emails), that are sent UNTIL someone replies, see this article.

Update on 3/22/16: This feature has been enhanced to include the ability to send follow-ups to those who replied, didn’t reply, or opened but didn’t reply.

Update on 7/10/16: This feature has been enhanced to include the ability to send follow-ups to those that bounced because you were over limit or those that failed to receive an email because of a Gmail API error.

It was the number one requested feature when I polled users a few months ago…you can now send follow up campaigns based on actions your recipients have taken on previous campaigns. Want to send a follow up to everyone that DIDN’T open your last campaign? You can do that. Want to send a follow up to everyone that OPENED but DIDN’T CLICK your last campaign? You can do that too. Or maybe you just want to re-send to exactly everyone who received a previous campaign.

Just reload Gmail in your browser and you’ll see the new “follow up” button next to the Search bar. It’s an @ symbol with an arrow. You’ll also notice that I shrank the “Build Email List” button to just a magnifying glass icon, so GMass now occupies even less of your Gmail screen real estate:

When you click the button, you’ll get a window where you can choose your past campaign, and then the behavioral segment to which you want to send a follow up campaign. If your original campaign was based on a Google Docs spreadsheet, then GMass will connect to the same spreadsheet to allow you to personalize the follow-up with the same data.

The behavioral segments you can choose from are:

Sent: Everyone that was a recipient of the campaign
Opened: Everyone that opened the campaign
Didn’t Open: Everyone that didn’t open the campaign
Clicked: Everyone that clicked at least one URL in the campaign
Didn’t Click: Everyone that didn’t click any URL in the campaign
Opened but didn’t click: Everyone that opened the email but didn’t click any URLs
Replied: Everyone that replied to the campaign. Note that replies take a couple hours after they reach your Inbox to be associated with the campaign.
Didn’t Reply: Everyone that did not reply to the campaign.
Opened but didn’t reply: Everyone that opened but didn’t reply to the email campaign.
Exceeded Gmail Limit: Everyone that bounced with a message indicating that your account was over limit. This segment is useful if you want to send your campaign to people that didn’t receive it the first time because you were over limit.
Gmail API Errors: Everyone that did not receive the email because there was an error when GMass attempted to connect to Gmail. These errors are rare, but you may want to re-send the campaign to those that didn’t receive it the first time because of errors.

Blocks: Everyone that didn’t receive the email because of a spam rejection. After you’ve addressed the issue causing the spam rejection (usually a tracking domain issue), you can use this option to re-send the campaign to these people, since they didn’t get your email the first time.

Also, in case you don’t regularly read this blog or the GMass Twitter feed, we added a ton of updates over the holidays. Instead of gorging on Christmas cookies all day like my family, I was hunched over my laptop and coding. Here are some other recent enhancements:

2016 is going to be a big year for GMass. If you’re a power GMass user, it’s essential that you follow us on Twitter. This announcement is for follow up campaigns that you have to send manually, but what I’m working on next will truly blow you away — automated follow-up drip campaigns, where you upload a lead list, and then we send the list a personalized message every few days until you get a response. There are lots of tools to send drip campaigns already, but none with a tight Gmail integration. Stay tuned for that!

GMass has its weak areas as well. I know that our Reporting could be much better, we don’t support Google’s Inbox yet, and I’m aware of GMass conflicting with other popular Gmail extensions, like Sidekick. These issues will be addressed soon.

One last thing — if you could do me a couple small favors, it would make a huge difference for me. First, if you haven’t already, write a review on the Chrome Web Store. Secondly, tell the Twitter-verse that you love GMass.

24 Replies to “New Feature: Send follow-up mail merge campaigns in Gmail”

Oscia Wilson

January 9, 2016 at 4:04 am

Just got Gmass and I'm about to use it for a Kickstarter campaign. It's great! I SO wish it could give a report on who has actually replied to an email campaign so I can get those people segmented onto a special "inner circle" list. Any chance this is coming soon?

Ajay Goel

January 11, 2016 at 5:09 am

Hi Oscia — you can get a fairly accurate list of those who replied to a previous campaign by:

1. Searching your Gmail account for "Re: [Subject]". For example, if you sent out an email campaign with Subject of "Support my Kickstarter campaign", then to follow up with people that replied to that, search for "Re: Support my Kickstarter campaign".

2. Then use the GMass "build email list" button (the magnifying glass next to the Search field) to launch a Compose window of email addresses that match that criteria.

That will give you a pretty accurate list of just the people that replied.

Rabbiahamed
November 14, 2017 at 3:20 am

Reply

Sir i am help Needed
Premium i am Chose per day How much Email i am Send ?
- Maya Quijada
  November 16, 2017 at 6:43 pm
  
  Reply
  
  See: https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/

Piero Rossi

February 24, 2016 at 11:53 am

What is missing is separate lists of
Opened
Bounced
Clicked
Unsubscribed

With email address, name,last name, date time

With this will be very OK

Piero Rossi

February 24, 2016 at 11:53 am

What is missing is separate lists of
Opened
Bounced
Clicked
Unsubscribed

With email address, name,last name, date time

With this will be very OK

Ajay Goel

March 21, 2016 at 9:28 am

We do provide detailed reports of opens, clicks, and unsubscribes. You will see a separate Gmail Label for each type of event under the main "GMass Reports" Label. And now, with the new reply management feature (http://blog.gmass.co/2016/03/gmail-email-marketing-reply-management.html), you can see Bounces also.

Ajay Goel

March 21, 2016 at 9:28 am

This is a duplicate question.

Anna

June 13, 2016 at 11:29 am

nice

Bob Harper

June 22, 2016 at 8:38 pm

GMASS is awesome so far! Any updated on the automated follow-up drip campaigns?

Ajay Goel

June 29, 2016 at 2:17 am

Yes, this has been live for over a month now. http://blog.gmass.co/2016/05/automatic-follow-up-emails-until-reply-in-gmail.html

Josh

April 25, 2017 at 12:07 am

How about for emails that don’t get sent to? I have a campaign that errored out about 30% through. How do I get the 70% sent?

Dana

August 23, 2017 at 3:30 pm

Can you send this type of email in drafts, then go to drafts and delete a few emails (those who have purchased/scheduled meeting, etc) so they don’t get a follow up if they don’t need one?

Thanks!

Pingback: How to resend your mail merge campaign to bounced email addresses because you exceeded your Gmail limit

Rob

October 2, 2017 at 5:59 pm

Hi,

How can I send manual follow-ups on top of the last email in a thread, instead of starting a new email thread with a new subject line?

ephraim

October 15, 2017 at 1:39 pm

I tried this but I’m getting an error message that I’m using at least 1 link that. has…… I can’t read the rest. But the links are fine. How do i send?

Maya Quijada
October 17, 2017 at 9:00 pm

Reply

That message pops up if you’re using a link that has been click tracked before. You probably copied/pasted text from your Sent – just delete the link and replace it with a “clean” URL, copied from your browser. That will solve the issue for you.

Yorgos

November 20, 2017 at 9:21 am

Hi, I am doing a manual follow-up. I followed the steps. The earlier email is not created. It looks like I am sending an entirely new email. Is this how it is supposed to be? I have a paid account.

Maya Quijada
November 21, 2017 at 9:44 pm

Reply

Manual Followups will launch a new Compose Window – that is normal. Open the GMass Settings Box and set the Campaign to Send as: Replies if you’d like to send in the same chain of emails as your last Campaign.