A bare-bones mailmerge script.

The mailmerge combines a CSV file of email addresses and associated data, with a TEXT file containing the subject and body of an email.

It uses the headers of the CSV file to replace placeholders in the email template.

Take a look at test.csv (the data) and test.txt (the email template) for an example.

Required fields

The CSV file must have a header named email, which contains the email addresses used to dispatch the emails.

Install the dependencies using bundler.

bundle install

Create a .env file, and define the SMTP settings:

cp env.example .env
# edit .env

That can be whatever SMTP settings you have. Sendgrid, Mailgun, Gmail, etc.

If you want to send email from your Gmail account, you can set up an application-specific password, in https://security.google.com/settings/security/apppasswords

SMTP_LOGIN=<your gmail address>
SMTP_PASSWORD=<your app-specific password>
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_SERVER=smtp.gmail.net

Send emails with the following command:

CSV=foo.csv TEMPLATE=bar.txt ./mailmerge

If you don't pass the CSV and TEMPLATE arguments, then the script will use the defaults:

CSV=test.csv
TEMPLATE=test.txt

The first line of the template file is used for the subject line.

The rest of the file is used as the body of the email.

Each header can be referenced in the email template using the header name, enclosed in double curly-braces (e.g. {{username}}).

See test.txt for an example.