You use mail merge to send a message to many different recipients. To do this, you want the body of the message to be nearly identical for each recipient. However, because you’re sending the message to different people, certain fields have to be personalized. Usually that means the address line and possibly the greeting line. You may also want customer numbers or other personalized information to be automatically inserted into the body of the message.
Most word processing programs, such as Word, have automated features for this. To use this feature, your program must have access to a database maintained by you. The software finds the recipients’ names and addresses in this database and inserts them in the correct places in the document.
Mail merge has a wide variety of applications. Companies use the feature to send brochures, invoices or offers in bulk. At home, most people use mail merge for sending invitations to big celebrations.