Overview
This article covers the generation of a mailer using Kindful Mail Merge. This includes the generation of labels, envelopes, letters, and CSV's for printing labels, etc., related to creating Email/Letter Templates. We'll walk through how to create labels or envelopes for printing various groups of contacts.
Linked Articles:
- Create Email/Letter Templates
Creating a Mail Merge
Go to the Contacts page.
Filter for the contacts you need. Learn more about filtering here.
Once you've narrowed down the specific contacts you'd like to generate labels or envelopes for, click Select All on the right vertical toolbar (or check the box on individual contacts).
Once your contacts are selected, click Mail Merge on the right vertical toolbar.
You'll be prompted with a "New Letter/Email" window. From here, select your chosen template.
As a note, only the following template types are eligible for a Mail Merge: Custom, Thank You Letter, Solicitation, Newsletter, or Marketing. For more information on template types, visit Understanding Template Types.
Finding Your Mail Merge
The next page you'll be directed to will be the Mail Merge History page. This will show you a historical list of mail merges you've conducted.
| Note: You can also get to this page in Communication > Mailings. |
You may see a message that says: "Your snailer is 0% generated. Please refresh to see progress". It may take some time to generate your mail merge depending on the size of the mailing. Feel free to refresh your browser after a minute or so to see if the download buttons appear.
When the mail merge is generated, you'll see a few different download buttons. Once you click Download Labels, labels will be emailed to you in a PDF format, ready to be printed on an Avery 5160 sheet of labels.
Labels will print using these fields to populate the contact information:
Formal Letter Name
Address
City | State, | Postal
If the Formal Letter Name field is blank on your contacts, Kindful will automatically create one using the Prefix + First Name + Middle Name + Last Name + Suffix fields.
PDF Example of Labels:
Of Note: You may find that some labels print off names/addresses in a smaller font than others. This is an automatic rule we apply to these when the amount of characters is so long that it would cause unintentional text wrapping to the next line. If any of the lines (name, address, etc.) have this apply, then the text will all be resized accordingly. The PDF will wrap anything at 22 characters or above. Editing some Contact's addresses to use the abbreviated end of their street type (e.g. "Rd" instead of "Road" or "Dr" instead of "Drive") could help bring the character count down.
Printing Envelopes or Labels
You can follow the same process above to get envelopes printed. After following the steps leading up to downloading the labels, click Download Envelopes (Download Labels) to receive an email with an attached PDF of the envelopes (labels). These will have the contact's formal letter name and address on them as well as your organization's address in the envelope's return section. Envelopes generated in Kindful are designed to be printed on Business #10 (Avery 5160) standard business envelopes.
Envelopes will print using these fields to populate the contact information:
Formal Letter Name
Address
City | State, | Postal
If the Formal Letter Name field is blank on your contacts, Kindful will automatically create one using the Title + Prefix + First Name + Middle Name + Last Name + Suffix fields.
Of note: Organization contacts will use this information
Formal Letter Name (Or Organization Name if this is blank)
Primary Point of Contact
Address
City | State, | Postal
If you want to remove your return information (e.g. if you already have pre-printed envelopes), you can disable your return address by visiting Settings, then General Settings. Scroll down to the Communication section where you can click a box to turn this feature off.
When attempting to print your labels or envelopes, you may see a message reading "No contacts were attached to the letter, due to no solicitations, deceased, or lack of address." Assuming you did have contacts you chose for this mailing, be sure to go back to your contacts page and apply at least one filter to the Current View filter bar before selecting these contacts for a mailing. We recommend using "Address Deliverable: Yes".
Mail Merge All Contacts
Since we assume that you'll likely segment your database for the mailer you're generating, the ability to mail merge your entire database at once is not currently available. However, there are still a few ways to accomplish a database-wide mail merge.
In Contacts, entering the filter Is Archived will ask for the input of either Yes or No.
Entering a No will filter for all contacts in your system that are not currently archived. Now that you've entered a filter, you can Select All and Mail Merge from the right sidebar.
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