I know there are a few of masters of the art of creating magical code on the TextMate list. I'm wondering if TextMate, with a little, perhaps a lot, of clever programming might be the solution to a very common small business problem.

Many small business owners are searching for a simple way to create and send customized boilerplate email to individuals and occasionally to Address Book groups. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm *not* referring to the usual 'bulk' email program, that market is already well served.

I know small business owners would be delighted to discover a straightforward, highly automated way to welcome new customers and periodically communicate with them by email.

Marketcircle's Daylite, an OpenBase SQL CRM, is the best solution I've been able to find. Objective-Decision's Contactizer Pro, Christian Fries' Serial Mail and MacTank's Mail Template also attempt to address this need. Bulk mail programs aren't likely to be the answer.

Overview: - family businesses are usually frugal - paraphrasing Occam/Ockham "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best." - leverage Apple's Address Book - leverage Apple's Mail - use TextMate to create email merge templates (provide an easy way to add Address Book fields to the merge template. Joe Pagliaro does this nicely with drop-down Address Book field selection in his program Mailings.) - merge data from Address Book into the TextMate merge template and transfer the merged text to Apple Mail for editing and sending

Potential workflow: 1. Select an existing Address Book client record (Spotlight) 2. Select a merge template (right click) 3. Magic happens, an email appears in Apple's Mail, ready to send.

I'm not a coder, so, it's a given that my idea may be ridiculous. It's possible Christian Fries was on the right track with Serial Mail. http://www.christian-fries.de/osx/SerialMail/index.html

Cheers, Frank