Mail merge

A form letter is a document that is sent to many recipients. It is thus a category of communication logistics. Address, salutation and parts of the content are usually personalized and can give the appearance of a personal letter.

As a rule today merge letters are created using computers. It is based on a database in the form of a simple table, for example in CSV (file format) and a template.

It will be implemented techniques that have established themselves since the 1950s with the writing machine that worked with tape and with ASCII code or the prelims.

The database contains the variable data (eg name, address, form of address, customer number) that will be integrated with the help of fields in the source text. In addition, target groups form letters can be created with information from the database. For one, the addresses can be filtered by various criteria to only write a specific target group. For other parts of the content may be subject to conditions, to achieve a further individualization.

The creation of form letters is supported by most word processors. Modern word processing programs provide for an assistant who accompanied the creation of form letters step by step.

The processing of form letters is partly carried out by external service providers. You can in addition to data management, printing and enveloping also assume the postage optimization. Thus, human and financial resources of the consignor are preserved in large numbers.