If you want to create an email list in Gmail so that you can easily send the same email to a list of different people with just a few clicks, you’re in the right place. Because today, that’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do.
Obviously, this won’t be the perfect way to send out a professionally designed email newsletter as Gmail doesn’t have the design tools needed to do something like that. (If you want to be able to send out nice looking email newsletters like that, I would recommend using a tool like Mailchimp).
But if you just want to be able to send out simple looking emails with basic text, links, bullet points, and maybe a few images to a group of people, this method will be the perfect solution.
Prefer to watch a video about how to create an email list in Gmail? Click here.
How To Create A Mailing List In Gmail
To get started with creating your email list, the first thing you need to do is actually go into Google Contacts by going to https://contacts.google.com/ and signing in with your Google account if you’re not already signed in.
Now, you’ll need to make sure that all the email addresses you want to add to the list are in your Google Contacts. If they’re all there, you can proceed to the next step, but if there are a few missing, you’ll need to add them by clicking the “Create contact” button in the top left corner.
Once you’ve made sure that all the addresses are in there, you’ll need to select all the ones you want to add to the list by hovering your mouse over each one and clicking the check box that appears.
Once you’ve selected all the ones you want, click on the “Manage labels” button at the top of the screen.
And then click “Create label”.
Now you’ll need to give it a name, this is the name of your email list that you will see in Gmail whenever you go to send an email to it. No one else will see this name, it is just for you to identify it by. So I’d recommend just naming it something that you’ll remember it by.
But for the purpose of this article, I’m just going to name it “Demo List”.
And then, once you’re happy with the name go ahead and, click “Save”.
And now your list is created! You’re now ready to go into Gmail and start sending emails to your list.
How To Send A Group Email In Gmail
Now that your list is created, whenever you want to send an email to your list, just go into Gmail and click “Compose” like you normally would whenever you send an email in Gmail.
Now, in the “To” field of the compose window, you’ll need to start typing the name of your list. I named my list “Demo List” so I’ll start typing that, but you just need to start typing whatever you named your list.
After you’ve typed the first few letters of your list name, you should see it appear as though it’s an email address. Now you just need to click on it and all the addresses on the list will be added to the “To” field.
Now all you would need to do is give your email a subject, type the message body, and click send. Then your email will go out to everyone on the list!
This is great most of the time, but one thing you should keep in mind is that when you send the email, everyone who receives it will be able to see every other address on the list.
This doesn’t really matter if you’re just sending it to a group of friends or something. But if you are using this list for certain other purposes, you might not want anyone to be able to see all the other recipients.
But fortunately, there is actually a way to get around this. When you go to compose your email, if you put your own email address in the “To” field, and then click on “Bcc” in the top right-hand corner of the compose window.
You will now be able to Bcc (blind carbon copy) your email list into the email by beginning to type the name of your list in the “Bcc” field and then clicking on it.
If you send your email this way, everyone on the list will see that you sent it to yourself and that you blind carbon copied them into it, but no one will be able to see who any of the other recipients are.
The only other thing worth keeping in mind is that the free version of Gmail only allows you to send 500 emails every 24 hours so this won’t be perfect for large newsletters or anything like that. But for certain uses, this method can be really handy.
