Using a mass email service within Gmail to send invitations and keep track of responses is easier than ever before
If you are a parent of a young child, then you’ve likely encountered the controlled chaos that is a child’s birthday party. Often there is so much going on that it can be hard to focus. As a parent—and host of the event—there is a good chance that you are in charge of finding the venue, providing food, decorations, activities, goody bags, and more.
There is one element of your child’s birthday party that you can simplify with just a few clicks, and that’s the invitations. Sometimes sending out invitations can get convoluted and hard to keep track of. Often, when children are young it is important to invite their whole class so no one feels left out. So, to help you better write, construct, send, and track birthday party invitations, we’re going over all of the different ways that you can use a mass email tool to make sending invitations easier than ever. Keep reading to find out how to send mass emails and how you can streamline the invitation process. Let’s get started!
Step 1: Finding a Gmail Mass Email Service
Your first step to sending better invitations is to try out a few mass email services and decide which one works best for you
Choose the mass email tool you feel most comfortable using.
Mass email services are used for a variety of different purposes, one of the most common uses for mass email is for businesses. Businesses need to send lots of emails all at once in order to reach large groups of customers, without disclosing the individual emails to everyone, which is why they require these kinds of tools. While being a parent doesn’t require sending quite as many emails, there are still lots of occasions that require you to send many messages out at once confidentially and track responses.
To find the tool that works best for you, we recommend trying out the free trials of a few different mass email services. There are a lot of different mass email services currently available, but not all are created the same way. The first thing you want to pay attention to when shopping for a mass email tool is a user-friendly interface. As we mentioned, you won’t be using the service in the same capacity as a business, so there are some features that you won’t need. What you will need—however—is a tool that is easy to use.
Another thing you need to consider when choosing a mass email service is the reporting capabilities of the tool. In order to keep track of the replies to your birthday invitation, you will need a service that offers comprehensive and easy to view reports. So, before you make your final decision, test out the mass email service and make sure that it is right for your emailing needs.
Since there are so many different services out there, we thought we’d give you an option that you can use right from within your Gmail account. GMass is a mass email service that is integrated in your Gmail account and is available completely for free. GMass offers a free trial that includes all of the helpful mass email features we’re going to discuss, which means that the free trial is more than enough to get you started with your invitations. We should mention that other very popular invitation services aren’t able to personalize your invitations or upload your guest list—and many require payment to use. That’s why we recommend GMass to send mass emails for all of your invitation needs. You can send all of your invites for free and without any hassle. You never know, you may end up finding uses for GMass even after your child’s birthday has passed!
Step 2: Create Your Guest List In Google Sheets
Executing a mail merge in Google Sheets is preferable to using Excel
Input your handwritten guest list into Google Sheets.
Now that you have your mass email tool and you’ve familiarized yourself with how it works, the next step is to get started on your guest list. We recommend using Google Sheets to create your guest list as many mass email services are compatible with Google Suite as opposed to Microsoft office. That’s why we’ve been mentioning Gmail mass email services exclusively.
In order to start your address list for a child’s birthday party, you will need three pieces of information. You’ll need to collect the parent’s name, child’s name, and the parent’s email address. For some people you may have this information off the top of your head, for others you may have to ask around or contact a teacher.
Once you have this information, it is important to properly organize the information in your Google Sheet. Start by separating the columns into the parent and child’s first and last names and designating them with a name at the top of the columns. “Kid First Name” or “Parent First Name” should work just fine. Once the information is organized and the email addresses are added, you are ready to move on to the next step. Just be sure to double check your guest list to make sure all of the information is in the right place to avoid any embarrassing name mix-ups down the line.
Step 3: Write and Design The Invitation
Now that we’ve taken care of the guest list, it’s time to create a custom invitation for your child’s birthday
Create an invitation that appeals to both children and their parents.
One of the best features that come with a mass email service is the designer. Instead of sending out boring, text only emails for your child’s upcoming birthday party you can create unique invitations that are sure to impress all of the other parents. Using the designer, you can import photos, add animations, embed videos, add borders, and use a whole host of other features. As we mentioned, not every mass email tool is created equal, so be sure to play around with the design feature included in the services you are considering.
While you are working on the design elements of the message, you can also get started writing the actual text in the invitation. Here is where the magic begins to happen with your mass email service. Using brackets, you can personalize parts of the message so you can avoid having to write out the name of each parent/child recipient. As an example, you could write—”{Kid First Name}, it’s time to celebrate” to begin the message. In the next step, we’ll be showing you how to make sure that the information is correctly input for each message. For this step, all you really have to do is design and compose one message and the mass email tool will take care of the rest!
Step 4: Personalize The Invitations by Executing a Mail Merge
Time for the best part! Effortlessly personalize all email invitations by executing a mail merge
Use personalization to create eye-catching invitations.
Now that your message is composed and you’ve designated spaces for personalization elements, it is time to execute a mail merge. While this may sound like a complicated task, it is actually one of the easiest parts of the whole process. You’ve done the hard work already setting up the guest list and designing the invitation. All you have to do is import your guest list into your mass email tool. For most mass email tools, this is an easy to access feature that only requires a few clicks. Once you have imported your address list, you can execute the mail merge which inputs the email addresses and corresponding personal information of all recipients. That way, instead of writing out individual invitations for every person who is coming to the birthday party, you can automatically customize all of the invitations at once.
Step 5: Test The Birthday Invitations
For the next step in the process, it is important to verify that all of the invitation elements are appearing correctly before you hit send
Avoid sending invitations with mistakes by testing your messages.
The last thing you need to check before you hit “send” on your child’s birthday invitations is to test the messages. Even though mass email tools and mail merge make the whole process of sending out invitations easier, you still need to double check before sending out those invitations. After all, if you send them out with personalization errors or if some elements of the message don’t load properly, then you will have to send out follow ups. No one wants to have to clarify themselves after sending an email invitation with errors! So, before you hit send, we highly recommend using the “test” feature included with your mass email tool. By sending a test to yourself or someone you trust, you can make sure that all of the invitations are perfect. Once you have verified that all elements of the invitation are working correctly, you can hit send.
Step 6: Reporting
Once your invitations are sent, you can easily keep track of replies
Easily keep track of all invitation responses.
After you hit send, there are still even more features of a mass email service that you can use to make sure your child’s birthday goes off without a hitch. Mass email services have reporting capabilities that make it easy to track who opened and replied to your invitations. You can even create a link for guests to click to automatically RSVP yes or no. Many sass email services feature automatic list updates, meaning your guest’s RSVP status can be automatically recorded in your guest list.
These are just a few of the ways that you can use a mass email service to easily send out invites. While there is a small learning curve for these tools, once you get the hang of it you’ll be sending better birthday invitations before you know it!
I think we can call out Gmass explicitly here. I think realistically gmass is competing w paperless post, and evite for invitation uses, not other “gmail mass email services” per se, both of which I believe cost money. So i would touch on those options and then talk up Gmass because it’s integrated right into your existing gmail account and the free version should still be able to accomplish what you need to do. I BELIEVE (but def check) you can’t do a mail merge in those services to personalize or upload the guest list. so that’s another plus