While managing college groups in college, one of my most cumbersome tasks was sending all our new recruits personalized emails. I found that instead of a blanket mass-mail, personalizing the email to each user led to higher retention rates. This was also useful in publicizing events.

The program that saved me was Atomic Mail Sender ^[1], an easy-to-use program coupled with a lot of power. They have a free demo with most of the functions.

If you're in a situation where you need to send lots of customized emails but want more than Microsoft Office's built-in mail merge, then I encourage you to try it out.