I’ve found software that’s changed my life!

Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole, but this little Add-On for MS Excel has made my job a lot easier lately.
It never made sense to me that Microsoft made it such a pain to create distribution lists for Outlook. Merging email addresses, or any other data, into an Outlook email seemed impossible. (Although I still have my suspicions that such a capability must exist hidden somewhere in that mysterious Outlook Form Creation ability.) I was always stumped on what to do with a list of emails stored in Excel and the desire to send the complete list an email. Being able to merge other fields would be an even greater boon! Enter XL Email Manager from Big Red Consulting. Once installed, it’s very easy to create a text and/or html email from Excel data and send it out via your mail server or own copy of Outlook, merging any fields from that Excel spreadsheet into your message. A single user license costs $69 — well worth it in my book — but a completely unencumbered trial version is good for the first 30 days.
There are online services like Vertical Response and Constant Contact that you can use to conduct more powerful email marketing campaigns, but for quickly sending a personalized email to a list of clients, this nifty software has got it going on.
Big Red Consulting offers other tools useful to Quicken and Quickbooks users as well.