The majority of business that use online marketing use email marketing. Often, they pay per message, and at a point, it becomes more practical to use either a bulk email service or bulk email software. These services are often web-based and independently hosted by a company.
So, why is it that a bulk email service is your best bet as a business for doing a lot of email communication? When you send out a lot of emails at once, or even repeated emails in a short span to a moderate number of recipients, there is a chance that you may be blacklisted by one or more internet service providers (ISPs). If this occurs, your emails will not be sent to your customers as a consequence and will be blocked from going through that provider. Bulk email services and software can help you avoid that using blacklist monitors and white-listing.
The real question, and a worry I see a lot in business articles is how to use these services effectively. Primarily, you need to keep in mind your area's regulations and laws surrounding bulk emailing. From there, though, you need to think like a consumer. That means making sure that your emails have the following points:
- The email is targeted to the customer group, so you're not sending irrelevant data about a deal that does not apply to your customers. For example, a single man has no interest in his local drugstore having feminine hygiene product sales, and a family of five shopping for a minivan doesn't care about the latest sports car.
- Your writing is interesting enough to catch the eye, and then once opened it holds readers' interest but still says what it needs to about your promotions.
- Your landing page, signup form, or other promotional data is linked in more than one place, raising the likelihood that it will get checked out. Check the writing on emails that did well, based on your email analytics reports, against ones that did poorly.
- Use tags in order to attach personal information to each email. In other words, identify the customer by name, making it seem more personal, remind them why you're contacting them, maybe suggest other products or services they may be interested in based on their subscription to your mailing list and so on.
- Possibly the most important tip when building a bulk email campaign, though, is to plan it out instead of just writing the body and mass mailing it. What are your intangible objectives? Do you want to create awareness of products and services? Drive traffic to your website? All of the above? Now plan out how you'll track this information.
- Convert your wish list into a tangible goal, so that you can track the return on the investment. Almost half of all businesses using email marketing don't write up any theories or strategies before they put the information out there, and then blame their bulk service or software when it doesn't succeed. Content should be carefully planned and divided depending on the group being sent the email. It's like playing chess. You need to think like the consumer, and also ahead of them.
Hopefully this gives you a better idea how to put your bulk email service or software to use. Remember that, regardless of what you use, the service or software will only automate the mailing process. The success of your bulk email depends on the content, not the service.
Like with any software or web-based service it will only do what you tell it to, so be sure to build an email that will work well for your customer communication needs. Always remember that customer communication is one of the most important things to maintain and that the needs and wants of the customer need to be carefully considered when you explore using a service or software for bulk email or any other channel of communication.
