Bulk emails are a powerful marketing tool when they are done right. Experts agree that bulk email should be based on user permission rather than unsolicited or spam. The risk to business with spam is great and the senders’ web site and email could be de-listed by their severs if there are user complaints. Losing even a simple web site is throwing away thousands of dollars but the loss of reputation of a company could be even greater. That is why most big companies make sure that their emails are permission based. Also while seeking permission, it is important to keep in mind that if a person fills out a form to download something from the landing page, it does not mean that the person has given permission for him to be emailed with promotional offers. Companies should not look at people giving out their contact address initially to get an advertised benefit as an open invitation to invade their inboxes. The best strategy is to get their explicit permission beforehand so that the emails can be sent. Otherwise the number of spam hits might be great and that will hurt your business further and erode your goodwill significantly.

However once a list of explicitly permission based emails is gathered, then bulk emailing becomes an art. The trick with bulk emails is not to send them all at once but to discriminate and segment users in such a way that the material being sent is highly relevant to them or their businesses. Good bulk email providers will have the necessary tools to allow senders a high level of personalization so that each email looks like it has been sent with a specific user in mind. Some software allow for sending emails gradually so that your email provider will not grab all the emails to decide to suspend your account. Even if the emails pass the filter of your own account, they may get the email address black listed on anti-spam servers because of the high volumes of outgoing email. Therefore bulk emails can be sent a few at a time, like 5 emails per minute, with the right software.

Another benefit of bulk emails is that once a prospect has entered the sales cycle, then auto-responders can be set up to send emails at frequent intervals until the customer performs the desired action like buying the product. In most cases, selling involves multiple engagements with the client until the final sale is made and auto-responders help the client keep the product in mind. You have to guess at the most likely number of emails that a certain sale would require and program the auto-responder with that number of emails, which can be personalized to the level of the individual, to make the sale. Even after the sale is made, the auto-responder can be again programmed to send emails at different intervals to keep the customer engaged so that multiple sales can be made to the same customer. In fact the goal of the bulk email campaign should be to create regular customers rather than to make one-off sales so that you have a loyal customer base.

Of course the man advantage of bulk emails is the ability to check how many emails were actually opened and if the desired action has been taken. The messages in the emails can be split tested and monitored closely to see which ones work to make them more effective. You could segment the emails with various pitches, emotional appeals, urgent needs, scarcity etc. and see which one works best. Of course this will be different for each product and company but the great thing about bulk email is it lets you do that.  

Related posts

• No related posts.