If you’re still shoving a bunch of email addresses in your “To” or “CC” fields to reach different groups of people, you’re wasting time and energy.
In this blog, we will explore the benefits of using Gmail groups and give you a step-by-step guide on how to create Gmail groups for different contacts to make your emailing much easier, so you can focus on what you send instead of how to send it.
In this article, we’ll go over:
- Benefits of creating Gmail groups
- How to create Gmail groups
- How to send emails to Gmail Groups
- Limitations of Gmail Groups
So, let’s get started:
Benefits of creating Gmail groups
Instead of tediously adding multiple recipients to an email, you can simply send an email to a Gmail group and it will automatically send to all its members. This is particularly useful for sending out newsletters, updates, or other important information to different segments of your audience.
Instead of manually adding or removing recipients from an email every time you want to reach a target segment, you can simply add or remove members from the group. This keeps your email list up-to-date and ensures that only the people interested in receiving your emails are actually getting them.
How to create Gmail groups
Let’s get you started on creating your first Gmail group:
Step 1: Open “Contacts”
When logged in to your Gmail account, click on the top right menu, and select the Contacts app:
Step 2: Select your contacts
Mark all the contacts you want to add to the Gmail group you are about to create:
Step 3: Create your first Group label
In the top menu bar, click on the label icon (middle), and then select create label:
Name your new group. As example, we used “Test Group 1”:
Congrats! You’ve created your first Gmail group. Maybe 1 of many!
You can find your group in the left menu of your Contacts app:
Bonus step: Adding new contacts
To add new contacts, repeat steps 1 and 2:
- Open Contacts
- Select your contacts from the list
and then:
Press on the label icon and select your group: (Test Group 1)
How to send emails to Gmail groups
Your Gmail group is now set up, and you can now easily send your group emails!
Like any new email, you’ll have to select “Compose” to open a new email pop-up/window to compose your email.
Once your content is ready, and you’ve written a catchy subject line, go to your “To” field and start typing your group’s name:
Select your group, or multiple groups (you can also added individual addresses, and CCs) and you’re set!
Limitations of Gmail groups
After you create a Gmail group (or many), you have now access to bundled groups of contacts addresses with your communication, and you just saved yourself heaps of time setting up each email before you send those emails.
However, Gmail groups have limitations.
Frequent changes
You’ll have to update your group’s contacts manually. New contacts will have to be added into a Gmail group one by one using the above method. Making edits to contacts and their info can get complicated as you move in and out of pages and layers. Unlike using Mailmeteor, where you can manage your contacts from Google Sheets with columns that can be filtered and segmented clearly.
Replies and follow-up
After your first email, if you’re expecting responses or plan to sequence your emails, maybe Gmail groups is not for you. Following up with everyone in a group will confuse some of your contacts, and it just adds to the clutter. You’ll need email tracking and reporting and to set up your sequences. Gmail doesn’t support email sequences yet, but you can set up email sequences in minutes without complex tools.
Limited personalization
Although you can personalize content to specific groups of contacts, you can’t personalize down to each contact. You can work around this by using the somewhat limited Gmail Multi-Send feature (if you’re eligible), or better yet, install the Mailmeteor add-on to use mail merge tags and a ton of personalization in your emails!
Conclusion
When it comes to emailing to multiple audiences, organizing you contacts into groups goes a long way. It eliminates error margins and complications from typing in dozens of emails, saving you time and effort (and sanity) to deliver better service and communications.
It just makes your life easier. But if you’re really looking into upgrading your productivity and winning at emailing, why not try Mailmeteor? You get all the benefits of grouping, personalization, tracking, sequencing, and much more.
Want to master emails? Check out what Mailmeteor can give you to get there.
