- 20th Sep '19
By Mathieu Picard- 10 minutes read
You probably have at least one Gmail account and so do most people you know. Did you know that the email provider allows you to create contact lists and segment them with labels?
This functionality might come in handy when you need to email a large group of people or if you have to send different template messages to distinct groups. In this article, we’ll talk about Gmail and this useful resource, plus some other tips that can help you improve your emailing experience.
These are the topics we are going to cover:
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Information about Gmail
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Gmail list definition
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How to create an email list in Gmail
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Gmail Lists Pros and Cons
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Gmail Add-Ons and Extensions
Image Source: FreePik
About Gmail
Gmail is the largest email provider with over 1.5 billion active accounts according to a report from late 2018. Launched in 2004, by Google, the service has evolved to be a solution with native add-ons and other extension options provided by third parties, which turns the email into a powerful tool for personal and business use.
Image Source: androidpolice.com
Since Gmail is so relevant to the online world, we gathered useful information about how you can optimize its usage and we will begin by talking about email distribution list through Gmail.
Note that you can use Gmail to either send individual emails or create a template message and send it to multiple recipients through a list.
That being said - we are going to show you how to create an email list and achieve better results with your email strategy through Gmail.
What is the Gmail list functionality and how to use it?
The list option offered by Gmail allows you to send the same email to multiple people at the same time. It works like a group, but it is one way messaging as the recipients will only be able to reply to you when you add the list to BCC.
Creating a list is quite simple and we wrote below the steps of how to make an email list in Gmail:
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Sign in and access the Google Contacts page
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Select the contacts
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Click the “labels” icon
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Select the contacts from the dropdown menu
Sign in to your account and access the Google Contacts page. You can find the page in the menu tab in the top right corner. In ‘Contacts’ you’ll have access to the Gmail list of email addresses.
If you already have the contacts you want to add to the list in your contacts you can go ahead and select them.
Now it is time to either import a contact list to your Gmail account or just select the contacts you would like to add to your google group email list by ticking the box close to their names
After you select the contacts, a few icons will appear at the top of the screen. Select the one that represents ‘labels’, which looks like a tag button.
A drop-down menu will appear and you can either add the contacts you have selected to labels that already exist or you can create a new one.
Extra information about Gmail Lists
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You can create as many lists as you wish
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Gmail automatically lets you know if there are duplicated contacts and you can easily merge them
Pros and Cons of Using a Google Email List
As you already know, the email list is quite useful when you to send the same email to a long list of people, plus the list helps save time.
There are other good things about it, but there are also a few cons. We made a list to clarify:
| Pros |
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| Cons |
|
For personal use Gmail is free and the benefits win over the cons. But for business purposes and large scale campaigns it is very important to have a tool that keeps track of email marketing KPIs for future reference and content strategies.
How to send an email campaign to a Gmail list
Now that you have learned how to make a mass email list in gmail it is time to create the email content and send them.
Check out how to use the list:
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Go to gmail.com and click on ‘Compose’ button, in the left tab
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In the email address field, you have to type the ‘label’ name you created for the mailing list
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Compose the message or add an email template previously saved as a canned response.
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Click ‘Send’ to finish the job
Email daily limit
Google has added a limit of emails that can be sent daily to avoid bad practices such as spam. You might get a warning if you send over 500 emails in one day or if you try to email more than 500 people at once.
In case you need to send a mass email campaign to thousands of people, there are other tools that can be used, such as automation tools for emails.
We believe that Gmail is very good for campaigns related to account management and to keep a close relationship with a small list of customers. However, for lead generation and nurturing, the best idea is to go with the automation tools.
Gmail extensions for email campaign
Gmail has add-ons and extensions available that can take your experience to the next level. There are native add-ons that can be very helpful for email marketing strategies. Here are a few of them:
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Canned responses
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Export
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Import
Canned Responses: We mentioned this topic earlier in the article. Canned Response is quite helpful as you can save templates and use them as needed. It is a functionality native to gmail, but you have to activate it by:
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Go to Settings
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Click in the Advanced tab
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Select the box Enable Canned Responses
Export: Gmail offers the option to export your contact list so you can back it up and use it on other tools. Below you will see how to export a list:
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Sign into your email
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Go to the contacts tab
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Select the contacts you would like to export by ticking one by one or select a label to export all contacts saved under it
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Choose if you want to export in Google CSV, Outlook CSV or vCard (for iOS)
Import: Another great option is to import email lists created by using a SaaS to extract emails from Linkedin and use content generated by the software itself that can be shared through Gmail lists. In order to import a list you’ll have to follow a list template in .csv, which is very common and easy to generate.
There are also extension options to help with Customer Relationship Management, Email Tracking, Notes, Financial Management, Tasks, Content Creation and many more categories.
We made a list of the extensions and add-ons developed by third parties that are most recommended by the users:
| Category | Add-On | Resources |
| Productivity | Gmelius | It powers up the inbox and turns into a dashboard that can be used to collaborate within a team. |
| Productivity | Trello | You can integrate your Trello board to the gmail account and instantly create cards based on your emails. It helps to organize daily tasks |
| Productivity | Assistant.to | Online assistant for meeting scheduling. It can be easily integrated with google calendar and the schedules can be added to the email |
| CRM | Insightly | This extension is a cloud-based platform for sales, marketing, and project management |
| CRM | Streak | This tool is quite famous as it is totally integrated into gmail and it allows salespeople to manage sales cycles, emails and customer support directly from gmail |
| Tracking | MailTrack | Free tool to track email delivery and links. You can find out if the recipient opened the email, but the person also knows that you are using MailTrack |
| Content | My Signature | It creates a professional signature for yourself or your business, which helps increase professionalism and improves email layout |
| Content | Grammarly | This extension checks grammar and spelling and it is very good for email content creation |
| Email Campaign | Boomerang | It allows you to schedule when your emails should be sent, to confirm if the email was opened and other resources such as reminders |
Alternatives to creating lists in Gmail
We mentioned that Gmail is suggested for small email marketing campaigns or for account management. So if you need to send mass mailing and create campaigns for a large group of people the best idea is to look for a high-level tool that fits your needs and budget.
An alternative service will allow you to send unlimited emails, create personalized templates in HTML, find and validate emails, generate campaign insights and sentiment analysis, among other resources available. This is a prospecting tool, but you can also think about other options like:
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A CRM to keep track of all leads, such as Pipedrive
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An inside sales tool for lead scoring
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Email marketing software like Mailchimp
Buying a SaaS license is an investment worth making it.
It pays off in the medium to long term if you consider sales percentage increase and profit. Plus, time is money and the employees will be saving a lot of time with emails, lead scoring and nurturing, so you can consider the financial return very good.
Conclusion about Gmail group email list
Gmail is a good alternative for bulk email campaigns as it is easy to import contacts from free lists, for example, but it shouldn’t be used for large scale email marketing campaigns.
It is a very good tool for introduction emails, team communication and to send template emails to a bunch of people, like when Sales Development Representatives use the same information over and over again to share with prospects and leads.
Let’s recap what should be done in order to make the best out of Gmail email list:
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Create labels just like you would do in a segmentation tool
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Keep the lists updated as they can easily be created and edited
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Integrate Gmail to an email extracting SaaS
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Watch out for the daily email limit
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Use add-ons and extensions
Hope you enjoyed learning how to make a Google group email list and that the lists help you speed your daily mailing processes.
Remember that for large scale campaigns it is better to count on a powerful SaaS that can help out through the whole sales process.
Mathieu Picard
CEO, Anyleads, San Francisco
We are the leading marketing automation platform serving more than 100,000 businesses daily. We operate in 3 countries, based in San Francisco, New York, Paris & London.
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