Do you want to send the same message to multiple recipients? You have a couple of options: a mail merge or the CC option. Understanding the differences and knowing when to employ each can help you effectively communicate your message.
In this blog post, we’ll give you everything you need to navigate the mail merge vs. CC dilemma. We’ll talk about what they are, how they compare, and how to use each for maximal efficiency. Ready? Let’s get started.
Mail merge vs. CC: which is which?
What is a mail merge?
A mail merge is a feature that allows you to create personalized email by merging a draft with a data source that contains specific information such as names, addresses, or other personalized content. Then, every email is sent out simultaneously, though they provide different information depending on the recipient.
Mass emails are a feature of Google Workspace, but it lacks some key features such as analytics. With the help of a good add-on like YAMM, Gmail becomes a mail merge to efficiently send mass messages, newsletters, or updates.
What is CC?
CC is short for "carbon copy." When you CC someone on an email, it means that they aren’t the primary recipient but receive an exact copy of the message for informational purposes. This is slightly different from BCC.
When you CC someone in a message, the primary recipient can see the CC’ed recipients, If you BCC someone in a message, the primary recipient can’t see who else received the message. Another difference is that BCC recipients don’t receive replies, whereas CC recipients do.
Adding recipients to the CC field allows multiple people to be aware of the communication. It's commonly used when you want to keep individuals looped in a conversation or provide them with visibility into certain details without making them the primary addressee. Learn how to use CC in Gmail.
How do the two compare and contrast?
Mail merge and CC serve distinct purposes in communication. If you want to send personalized mass messages that resonate with each recipient, a mail merge is the answer. In contrast, CC is about sharing information with concerned parties without involving them directly. Thus, mail merges prioritize personalization and mass communication, while CC emphasizes transparency and collaboration by sharing information among recipients.
The choice depends on your communication goals. If you want to maximize the impact of your messages, go for a mail merge. If you simply want to share visibility, you can opt for CC.
Can you CC on mail merge?
However, there are times when you need both impact and transparency. For example, you may want to send marketing emails to your subscribers while adding a team member to the CC list for verification or testing purposes. For such a scenario, you can use the CC feature even while using a mail merge tool.
While different platforms offer different ways of doing this with varying levels of complexity, doing so with YAMM is incredibly easy. In the next section, we’ll look at how you can CC on a mail merge with YAMM.
How to CC on a mail merge with YAMM
Step 1: Download YAMM
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YAMM is one of the most trusted and loved mail merge tools on the Google Marketplace. The first thing to do is go to Google Marketplace and download YAMM.
Once you have YAMM installed on your Gmail, you can begin the process of adding CC recipients for your message. There are essentially two ways of doing this, both of which we’ll cover below.
Step 2a: Add CC to your contact sheet
The first way is to add recipients you want to CC directly to your contact sheet.
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To do this, make a separate column on your contact list under the header ‘CC’ and insert the email addresses there. One thing to note is that YAMM is case-sensitive, so the header must exactly be ‘cc’ for this process to work.
Step 2b: Add CC to your email draft
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Another way to do this is to simply add the addresses of those you want to CC directly in your Gmail compose message window like you usually do.
There are a few things to remember if you want to use CC in a mail merge effectively. You should either add the addresses to the contact sheet or the Gmail draft, not both. This is because every email address is counted as one, and adding to both the contact sheet and Gmail draft will result in multiple messages being sent to the same email address. This will affect your sending quota.
Another thing to note is that even when you add some email addresses to the CC field in the Gmail draft, they receive a copy of each of the primary recipients' emails. For example, if you have ten primary recipients and add one address to the CC field in the Gmail draft, they will still receive ten emails.
If you simply want to CC someone for test or verification purposes, it’s best to add their address in the contact sheet just once so that they receive only one email and you maintain your quota.
Step 3: Complete your mail merge
Now, to send the emails, you just have to initiate your mail merge in Google Sheets. If you’d like, you can learn more about adding CC and BCC recipients in YAMM.
Mail merge or CC? You don’t need to choose with YAMM
There, the CC vs mail merge dilemma is sorted! When adding CC recipients to mail merge is so easy, you don’t have to pick one. There are other cool things that YAMM can unlock that you can’t do with just Gmail. If you’re interested, explore YAMM now!