Merge to Draft

In this mode, the add-on creates drafts only and does not send any emails. The add-on goes row by row and for each row creates a draft and inserts draft ID in the current sheet. Created drafts are saved in your Gmail Drafts folder. There are two main uses for this mode.

TEST MERGE CONFIGURATION

Using Merge to Draft mode you can test your merge configuration. When you create a new draft, add new merge fields, or you adjust mapping of merge fields, use this mode to generate drafts and check results without sending any emails. Once you are happy with the outcome you can switch to Merge to Send mode, or use the two-phase merge approach described below to send out personalized emails.

TWO-PHASE MERGE

The AnyMerge Mail add-on can be configured to do complex merge tasks, from simple text merge to more time-consuming tasks like merging QR codes and adding multiple attachments. The more complex the merge setup, the more time the add-on spends processing each row, and you can easily end up with processing times over one minute for a single row.

In such scenarios where you have very complex mappings and you would like to process hundreds of rows, use the two-phase merge approach. In the first phase, use Merge to Draft mode and the add-on will create drafts only. This part might take several hours to complete. Just make sure your workstation will not go to sleep and let the add-on crunch the data. Once the job is done, you will have a couple hundred drafts sitting in your drafts folder.

Once it's the right time to send the drafts switch, to Draft to Send mode. The add-on will send them immediately, using draft IDs stored in a column.

While creating drafts is a slow and time-consuming process sending already created drafts is much faster. Take advantage of two-phase merge when you need to send many emails with complex mappings.


TIP: Run the add-on in parallel to speed up processing of rows.

KEEP IN MIND: Before you can start a merge job in Merge to Draft mode, you must configure the Recipients column and the Draft IDs column in the output configuration editor. The add-on will use email addresses from the Recipients column and will set draft IDs into the Draft IDs column.