Bulk email sending is the lifeblood of business operations. From reaching new customers and strengthening relationships to promoting products/services and gathering feedback, bulk mail serves many purposes. However, unsolicited and unscrupulous email messages pose a threat to bulk email deliverability.
Unfortunately, the actions of a few bad actors make life difficult for everyone else. Therefore, businesses sending bulk emails must follow all the deliverability best practices to avoid triggering spam filters. In this article, we explore the fundamentals of bulk email marketing and share proven strategies for meeting your target audience in the inbox instead of the junk email folder.
Bulk Email Marketing vs Spam: Is It the Same Thing?
Bulk email marketing is the practice of sending a single email to numerous recipients at once. Also called mass emails or email blasts, bulk emails are typically used for sending promotional messages, invitations, newsletters, and announcements. You may think that sounds spammy, but bulk email is a potent tool for sending business correspondence efficiently.
The primary difference between bulk and junk email is intent.
- Junk emails constantly threaten recipients’ privacy and security. They might contain phishing tools, content spoofs, and other bad actors that can compromise user data.
- Bulk email campaigns are typically one-time advertisements, announcements, invitations, or newsletters that generate recipients’ interest in the brand.
What are the Benefits of Bulk Email Marketing?
To truly appreciate the essence of bulk email marketing, you need to understand its advantages. These are the five most noticeable benefits of sending bulk email:
Accessible and Cost-effective Marketing Channel
High-volume email allows businesses to reach a broader audience efficiently without wasting additional resources in approaching people individually. This is true for both B2B and B2C applications. Since almost everyone has an email address today, marketers can build an email list organically or use a bulk email finder to identify and validate business email addresses in bulk. This saves considerable time, effort, and money for emailing clients individually.
Enables Proactive One-on-one Communication
Bulk email marketing campaigns allow businesses to interact directly with their target audience. Instead of waiting for people to find you on social media, you can take your business to the customer via email. A direct line of communication ensures your messages reach the intended recipient on time. This is crucial for time-sensitive campaigns like product launches, holiday sales, business announcements, and marketing surveys.
Offers Greater Control Over Business Correspondences
Bulk email marketing doesn’t rely on search engine robots or social media algorithms to deliver messages to intended recipients, giving businesses greater control over communication. You decide what message to circulate through your contact list. This eliminates third-party interference and enables you to cultivate customer relationships on their terms.
Provides Real-time Customer Insights
A/B testing is essential to marketing emails, as it helps email marketers identify customers’ preferences and interests. Bulk email marketing lays the groundwork for identifying various elements, such as subject lines, offers and promotions, CTAs, body copy, images, email frequency, and anything else the audience responds to. Marketers use various analytics tools to analyze email performance and improve campaigns to generate higher responses and sales.
Improves Lead Generation and Conversion
Bulk email campaigns allow businesses to send targeted messages to different contact lists. Due to their specificity, personalized email messages significantly improve customer engagement and sales. This practice helps email marketers identify and cater to the exact needs and wants of specific audience groups. Thus increasing the chances of initiating a response, generating leads, and converting prospects into paying customers.
Proven Bulk Email Strategies to Improve Deliverability
Bulk email delivers outstanding results when executed properly. These are the most effective strategies for supercharging your bulk email marketing efforts:
Use Permission-based Email Lists
Quality is of cardinal importance in bulk email marketing. Maintaining high-quality email lists will help you reach people genuinely interested in your offers. With permission-based email lists, you get a group of loyal subscribers who consent to receive your marketing emails. The benefits include:
- Greater customer engagement and conversion
- Improved email performance metrics, such as open, response, and click-through rates
- Reduced email bounces and spam reports
- Higher email deliverability and spam confidence level
Scrub Contact Lists Frequently
Cleaning your email lists frequently improves bulk email deliverability. Removing inactive subscribers, invalid addresses, spam traps, typos, spoofs, and other bad actors significantly reduces email bounce rates, signaling mailbox providers that you’re a trusted sender.
Remember, a clean email list delivers better results than a long one. The number of valid email addresses in your contact list, not the data volume you have, determines deliverability and conversion. Therefore, good email list hygiene is paramount to bulk email marketing.
Segregate Subscribers Based on Browsing and Buying Habits
Identify customers’ wants, needs, and expectations and create dedicated contact lists to deliver personalized content. This sounds like a lot of work, but a lot of marketing platforms can do most of the work for you. For instance, our experts can help organize and segment your subscribers for higher deliverability. Click here to contact us today.
Write Clear and Attractive Subject Lines
The email subject line is a vital element of your marketing campaign. Based on the subject line, recipients open every 1 in 3 email messages. Therefore, writing clear and attractive subject lines can dramatically improve open rates.
You can deliver the entire message in the header but avoid common spam trigger words in your industry. Don’t be afraid to test different header variations to identify what works for your audience.
Optimize the Email Design
Visually appealing email templates get noticed. A great email design with lackluster content will perform better than an excellent offer packaged shabbily.
Find a great email design with plenty of white spaces, or build a custom HTML email template. Optimize your logo, images, and body copy to let the content breathe. Don’t distract the audience with eccentric visual elements. The goal is to get your message read and influence the reader to take action.
Remember to bold the CTA button, increase its size, and use your brand colors to help it stand out. Place social media icons and add a link to your website to guide readers down the marketing funnel.
Create a Consistent Email Schedule
Sending emails consistently is crucial for engaging readers without overwhelming them. Test the email frequency to see what your subscribers respond to most. Whether you send weekly, biweekly, or monthly newsletters, stick to a schedule for maximum engagement in the long run.
Comply with International Data Protection and Security Regulations
Complying with international online protection laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is crucial for maintaining a low spam score. Follow all the email authentication best practices to improve your IP and domain reputation, reduce spam reports, stay off the IP block list, and increase bulk email deliverability.
Build Your Email Lists Organically
Growing an email list organically is time-consuming. Therefore, we understand your urge to buy contact lists instead of patiently building one from scratch. However, commercially available email lists come with their own set of problems. For starters, they might be packed with spam traps, unverified email addresses, typos, invalid email addresses, dormant accounts, and other bad actors.
Sending a cold email to a purchased list is like shooting yourself in the knee—deliberately. It will affect email deliverability and harm your sender reputation. To lower your bulk complaint level, we recommend sending bulk messages only to verified email addresses.
Improve Deliverability Confidence Score
Short, simple, and recognizable sender addresses work better for bulk email marketing. Choose a custom business domain representing your brand so recipients can instantly recognize and associate the email with your company.
Verified custom domains are better for business correspondence as they help mailbox providers validate sender addresses and determine sender reputation. Google recommends bulk emailing from custom domains to improve the Deliverability Confidence Score (DCS).
Deliver Personalized Messages
Each one of us enjoys recognition. So, when customers receive an email with personalized product recommendations or an exclusive coupon, they are more likely to act on the sudden opportunity. Abandoned cart notifications are an excellent example of personalized emails. They remind customers to complete their purchases, increasing conversion rates.
Reward Patrons with Exclusive Discounts and Loyalty Benefits
Sending VIP promotions and loyalty benefits to your most active customers is the web version of rolling out a red-carpet welcome. By acknowledging, appreciating, and rewarding active customers, you convert them into loyal patrons and secure their business in the future. Launching a bulk email loyalty program during the holiday season can help you capitalize on the purchase fervor.
Supercharge Your Bulk Email Marketing Campaigns with Expert Guidance
Maintaining bulk email deliverability is a continuous effort. To maximize inbox placement, you must follow all the email marketing best practices mentioned above. If you’re new to email marketing, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed. But don’t lose heart just yet, as our experts are here to help. Click here to book a discovery call today and learn how our experts can optimize your bulk email marketing strategy and maximize conversions and sales.
Marketing at Email Industries