This week in our Flashback Friday series, we will be looking at a blog written in January 2014, called 10 Best Quick Tips: How to Send a Mass Email. This blog had lots of useful information about how to go about sending a mass email, from contact list regulations to calls to action.
This week, we'll share a few tips on how you can facilitate your mass email sending even further with the help of a marketing automation platform.
1. Import lists to a CRM
There is nothing worse than having to manually add the email address of every person you would like to send your mass email to one at a time. Using a contact relationship manager that is built into your marketing automation platform allows you to easily upload external lists of contacts to whom you would like to send out your mass email. A CRM collects contact information automatically and stores it into a unique personal profile for each contact and you can add these contacts to various lists for various campaigns either manually or automatically based on the information collected.
2. Conditional formatting
Sure, you want to send a mass email out to a large list of contacts, but how can you avoid having your email come across as bland and generic? With the help of a marketing automation manager and your CRM, you have the ability to custom tailor one email automatically to suit each individual contact's personal preferences. This can be done through a process called conditional formatting, which uses the information columns in the CRM to determine the relevancy of each section of your email in regard to each of your contacts. For example, say you had information in your email about an event happening in Boston. Your contacts who do not live in this city will likely not be interested in that event, so you can set a condition in that particular block of text so that it will only send to your contacts who have listed Boston as their place of residence in their CRM profile and be omitted from the email sent to those contacts who live elsewhere. Conditional formatting is a useful tool to help increase the open and engagement rates of your mass emails as people will be more likely to open the email if they know that the information therein will be relevant to them.
3. Scheduling in advance
Marketing automation can help you increase the efficiency of your mass email sending by giving you the opportunity to write all your communications in advance and schedule them to be sent automatically whenever you wish. This way, you don't have to worry about remembering to send your mass email at a particular time as the automation platform will do it for you. This also frees up your time to focus on other important responsibilities you may have.
4. Test send
It is always important to send out a test email in order to make sure that the formatting of your email is right on all browsers and devices: the content makes sense and that there are no typos. A marketing automation platform makes sending a test email easy. Once you have finished writing the email and have selected your lists, you have the option to send the email to your test list, which could comprise of your own email address or those of a few friends or colleagues who will be able to let you know if they have any issues with it. This way, when you send the mass email to all of your contacts, everything will be sure to run smoothly and seamlessly.
5. Web tracking
Finally, once you have sent your email through a marketing automation platform, you have the ability to track the open and click-through rates through the use of a web tracking software. This enables you to gather information about how your email was received and who interacted with any links you have included. The web tracking software will compile all the data it receives into easy-to-read reports that you are able to view and download for analysis. Furthermore, any information collected by the web tracking software in regard to each contact's interaction with the email is then added to their personal CRM profile, which you will then be able to use to tailor future emails to that contact.
If you would like to see how a marketing automation platform can help you send mass emails easier, sign up for the SimplyCast 360 platform's 14-day free trial!
