Run a mail merge for emails and documents

Get your columns onto your contacts

Every detail you want to merge has to live on the contact record as a field. Open Audience, choose Import, and upload the spreadsheet or paste the rows. On the mapping step, match each column to a field: name, email and phone map to the built-in fields, and any other column, such as Order number or Renewal date, becomes a custom field you create right there in the dropdown.

• Keep column headers short and stable; the header becomes the field name and the field name becomes the merge tag, so Order number gives you {(Order number)}
• One column per detail. A single "Orders" cell with three items inside cannot be split by a merge tag later
• Leave a cell empty rather than typing "n/a", so the fallback and conditional tags can react to it

Write the email with merge tags

Create a campaign and write it as if to one person. Wherever a personal detail belongs, insert a merge tag instead of typing it: the Personalize button beside the subject line, and the merge tag menu in any text block of the editor, list every field. A tag looks like {(first_name)} for a built-in field and {(Order number)} for one of yours.

• Give every tag a fallback, such as {(first_name OR "there")}, so a contact missing that value still reads a complete sentence
• Use {(Order2 PREFIX ", ")} for a separator that should appear only when the second value exists, and {(IF field)} ... {(END)} to show a sentence or a table row only for people who have the value. The merge tags guide covers each form
• The subject line takes the same tags, so "Your orders have shipped: {(Order1)}{(Order2 PREFIX ", ")}" reads correctly for one order or two

Add a personalized attachment

Attachments are switched on per account by our support team; if you do not see the Attachments card on the campaign page, ask support to enable it. On the campaign page, the Attachments card holds two sections. Shared files is the same set of files for everyone. Personalized attachment turns a saved template into one PDF per recipient. The head of the card keeps a running summary, for example "1 personalized PDF · 2 shared files", so an empty Shared files section never reads as nothing attached.

Choose any saved template, whichever editor made it, as long as it is the letter or certificate itself, written with the same merge tags. Set the file name pattern, for example Welcome Letter - {(first_name)} {(last_name)}, which can run to 120 characters.

Clicking the chosen template card opens the PDF preview. It opens on a real recipient, searches your list by name or email, and steps through it with previous and next buttons and an "index of total" counter, so you can check the person with the empty field as easily as the person with all of them. Open in new tab gives you the raw PDF. The Change chip beside the card is what swaps the template, and Remove sits in the section head. The whole card, shared files included, has its own guide: attach files to a campaign, and the document itself is covered in depth in Create and preview personalized PDFs.

Directly under the file name, Delivery decides how the document travels. Attach the PDF puts it on the email. Secure link, selected for new documents unless your admin changed the default, sends each recipient a personal link instead: they confirm one or two details on file, such as a member number or an access code, before their PDF opens. With Secure link, place the tag {(secure_document_link)} in your email where the link belongs; if the email has no tag, Mailsoftly adds a View your document button at the end, unless your admin switched that off. Send documents by secure link covers the whole delivery.

• The PDF is built at send time, one per message. With Attach the PDF nothing is stored afterward. With Secure link the PDF is kept encrypted in private storage while the link works and removed on schedule after it stops, so you can see who opened it and resend it
• Personalized attachments are available for lists of up to 5,000 recipients, and each PDF on its own must be under your account’s attachment size limit
• Attachments are enabled per account by our team. If the Attachments card is not on your campaign page at all, ask support to switch them on

Preview each recipient and send

Before sending, open the recipient list on the campaign page and pick a few people: one with every field filled, one who is missing a value, one with the most values. Each preview renders that person’s exact email. When the copies read right, send or schedule the campaign as usual. Every recipient gets their own subject, body and, if you added one, their own PDF, attached or behind their own secure link.