Sending bulk emailing can be an effective marketing tool when used appropriately and ethically. However, it's essential to strike a balance between promoting products or services and respecting recipients' preferences and privacy to avoid being marked as spam or alienating potential customers.
There are many services to send emails in bulk including new AI email senders. These AI tools can find and send emails quickly and efficiently, regardless if the recipient has approved or wanted the email. Let's dive in to the details for sending emails in bulk.
What is Bulk Email or Mass Emailing?
Let's start with understanding of what bulk emailing is. Bulk email, also known as mass email or email marketing, involves sending an email (or emails) to hundreds or thousands of people all at once. Bulk emailing is a powerful marketing tool to promote products, offer services, announce events, send newsletters, or inform users of updates at scale. You can set up a one-time send campaign or a sequence of emails that send automatically based on a trigger, action, or email list.
In short, bulk email is the act of sending email(s) to a large group of contacts all at once. Bulk email can be be scheduled or manually triggered, which means the timing of when the email goes out doesn't really matter as much as how many or the frequency of which they are sent. Today, there are many new software tools, AI email senders, and other email services to help with distributing the emails effectively.
Some marketing professionals prefer to schedule emails using bulk email services so that they know when they go out and when to expect some returns. This also ensure that the bulk email hits the inbox at the right time. Sending out mass or bulk email in the middle of the night might not be received as well as during the morning or afternoon.
A bulk email service, also known as an email marketing service or email campaign service, is a platform or service that enables individuals or businesses to send a large number of email messages to a list of subscribers or recipients simultaneously. These emails are typically sent for marketing, communication, or informational purposes. Bulk email services offer various features and tools to help users manage and optimize their email campaigns.
Related: Are Email Extractors Legal?
Popular bulk email service providers include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, SendinBlue, AWeber, and many others. The choice of a bulk email service often depends on the specific needs and goals of the user or organization, as well as factors like budget and ease of use.
AI email senders will use parameters or logic provided by the sender to filter or find emails and then executive the distribution of those emails in bulk to make sure the recipients see them.
Why Should I Send Mass Emails?
The greatest benefit of bulk emailing is that you can get your brand in front of a large number of people in a matter of seconds. While traditional marketing methods like direct mail or print advertising, can be costly, bulk email is cost-effective by comparison. Mass email is critical to generating leads, warming up leads, and keeping in touch with clients.
Whereas with traditional marketing, you may not know if the audience received your message, email marketing can provide a more in-depth view of what your audience is looking for. With bulk email you can get stats on open rates, click-through, unsubscribes, and more. This data is helpful to know which campaigns are working and which ones might not be hitting the their goals.
Overall, bulk emails are a versatile and powerful tool for businesses and organizations to engage with their audience, promote their products or services, and achieve their marketing objectives.
How to Start a Bulk Emailing
In order to start enjoying the many benefits of bulk emailing, you want to first find out your target audience. Consider who you’re trying to reach and what message you want to send. When you take the time to figure out who you’re talking to, you can come up with targeted messaging that hits a nerve and gets replied to. Remember, the more personalized the content is, the more successful it will be.
Next, you'll need to compile a list of email addresses to send your mass email, which is better known as a contact list. You can compile a list of emails manually, or you can use a tool like Seamless to build and segment your email list in minutes.
Your audience is usually at different stages of the buyer’s journey. With this in mind, you shouldn’t send the same email to everyone. Be more strategic and leverage segmentation where you split your contact list into sections or separate lists to better serve their needs individually. You can base segments on location, job title, pipeline stage, job title, and other unique factors.
Once you have your segmentation figured out, it’s now time to decide if you want to send your campaign at a set time or set up an email trigger. A sending trigger is an action that starts an email or sequence of automatic messages. With a sending trigger prospects can enter their email to sign up, then receive an onboarding sequence over the next two weeks.
Once you decide on a sending trigger, you need to send a live test of your email to yourself or a team member for quality assurance, which is also known as the QA process.
Steps for Sending Mass Emails:
The primary goal of bulk emailing is to communicate with a wide audience and promote products, services, events, or information. Here are some key aspects of bulk emailing:
- Email List: A bulk email campaign typically starts with an email list or database of email addresses. These addresses can be collected through various means, such as sign-ups on a website, customer databases, or purchased lists. It's essential to ensure that the recipients on the list have opted in to receive emails to comply with anti-spam regulations.
- Email Content: The content of bulk emails can vary widely depending on the purpose of the campaign. It may include promotional offers, newsletters, product announcements, event invitations, or educational content.
- Personalization: Effective bulk email campaigns often incorporate personalization elements, such as addressing recipients by their names or tailoring content based on their preferences and behaviors.
- Design and Layout: Emails should be well-designed and visually appealing. They should be mobile-responsive to ensure they display correctly on various devices and email clients.
- Sending Software: To send bulk emails efficiently, businesses use email marketing software or services. These tools help manage email lists, create and design emails, schedule send times, and track email performance.
- Segmentation: Segmenting the email list into different groups based on demographics, behaviors, or interests allows for more targeted and relevant messaging.
- Tracking and Analytics: Bulk email campaigns often include tracking features to monitor open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other metrics. This data helps assess the effectiveness of the campaign and make necessary adjustments.
- Compliance: It's crucial to comply with email marketing laws and regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the United States or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe. These regulations specify rules for obtaining consent, including opt-out mechanisms, and penalties for non-compliance.
- A/B Testing: Marketers frequently use A/B testing to experiment with different email subject lines, content, images, and calls to action to determine what resonates most with their audience.
- Opt-Out Mechanisms: Bulk emails should always include an easy and clear way for recipients to unsubscribe from future communications. This is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and good practice for maintaining a positive sender reputation.
Creating & Testing Email Content
After that, you’ll need to create the email content. The content of your mass email should be well-written and engaging, with a clear call to action. Make sure you proofread your email carefully before sending it. You don’t want to send an email with typos because you will lose credibility with your audience. Also personalize your email content as much as possible based on the contact list you’re sending it to. Personalizing your mass emails helps improve their effectiveness! You can use tags to include the recipient's name, company, or other personalized details in the email.
After writing your content, you should test your email campaign for effectiveness with an A/B test. A/B testing bulk email is a way to compare two versions of an email to see which one performs better. The two versions are sent to a small group of your contact list. That way you can test the audience’s genuine reaction to your content. You can use A/B testing to test different subject lines, content, etc. to see what is most effective.
Related: Learn how to write an irresistible cold email that makes prospects hit “reply”!
Sending Mass Email Platforms
In order to send bulk emails, you'll need to sign up for an account with a mass emailing marketing platform and follow their instructions for creating and sending an email campaign. Some are free, while others are more expensive. Whichever platform you choose, remember that you MUST protect your reputation. So it’s imperative to use a reputable email service that follows best practices for bulk emailing. Most platforms will have step-by-step guides and support resources to help you get started. There are plenty of platforms to choose from, but some are better for specific sending needs. For example, Outreach is better for sales reps sending to hundreds of people. While Salesforce Marketing Cloud is perfect for marketing campaigns because you can send it to thousands and also shoot off action-triggered requests like a password change email.
Top Mass Email Services:
- Mailchimp - Provides lot of features for customization and is used by businesses large and small. Pricing is affordable and they have a free plan for businesses to get started.
- Sender - Offer plenty of features and is able to send bulk emails by lists. Free plans make easy to try out.
- ConstantContact -One of the original mass email senders has been innovating and providing reliable services for years. Free and business plans for any level of support.
Beware of CAN-SPAM Laws!
Bulk email can be an effective way to reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. However, it is crucial to use bulk email responsibly, as it can also be marked as spam and have legal consequences.
There are many best practices to follow to ensure that this doesn’t happen to your bulk email like including an unsubscribe link in your email. While it can be tricky to navigate CAN-SPAM laws, we did the research so you don’t have to. Learn more about avoiding spam emails and crafting the right message.
Check the Results
After you’ve run the A/B tests or sent out a mass email, make sure to check the deliverability for all emails. Email deliverability refers to the number of emails that actually reach the recipient’s inbox, NOT their SPAM folder. Typically it’s represented as a percentage in order to compare results from emails with varying numbers of contacts in the list. Factors that can affect deliverability include the quality of your email list, the content of your emails, the sending history of your email account, and other activity that would be flagged as unusual or authentic to the inbox.
Another key insight you’ll want to check after an A/B test is the open rate. Open rate is the percentage of your audience that has received your email AND opened the message. These numbers will indicate how well your subject line entices your audience to open your email campaign.
RECAP
Bulk email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that involves sending a large volume of email messages to a list of subscribers or recipients simultaneously. This approach is used by businesses and organizations to promote products or services, share information, build customer relationships, and achieve marketing objectives. Bulk email marketing typically leverages email automation, segmentation, personalization, and analytics to reach a wide audience efficiently and effectively while allowing for targeted and data-driven campaigns.
Key Take-aways:
- Build a list of contacts in your target audience
- Tailor the content to fit your reader & test it to adjust
- Make sure you have the most up-to-date and accurate emails from Seamless to avoid the spam folder
- Find the sending platform that fits your needs the best
Following these best practices will ensure that your bulk email campaigns are effective and avoid poor deliverability.
While there are some pitfalls to avoid, bulk email can be a helpful tool for reaching a large audience– just make sure to use it responsibly!
