Bulk email marketing is a way to reach prospective customers and to stay in communication with existing clients. It has become a big business over the last years what is quite justified. Bulk email marketing provides companies and organizations with a great possibility to advertise and sell their products and services. Sending letters to prospects and customers via email is quicker and less expensive than traditional bulk postage mail. Plus, you can easily contact people in all parts of the world, and your growing email list will be bringing you more sales. With all that, bulk email marketing has one main disadvantage — unsolicited emails, often labeled “spam.” Unsolicited emails are the emails that the recipient didn’t request. If one sends the messages to someone else without his permission, those emails are classified as spam. Sending spam can ruin the company’s reputation as people usually blame this type of mail received without their consent.
So, to accomplish a focused, targeted, and effective bulk email campaign that will bring you the results, you should consider some points before implementing it. The key to success is to follow some rules when planning your campaign.
Email Marketing Objectives
Decide on what you will tell your audience what you want to achieve with your email campaign. Is it a newsletter for establishing a relationship with your prospective customers, or is it a sales-oriented letter for your existing clients? Do you want to generate leads, bring more traffic to your website, inspire loyalty, or increase sales?
Building Your Email List
Don’t buy ready-made lists of email addresses from a source that you don’t know well. Don’t use email harvester software to collect email addresses from web sites. The best-approved way to build your mailing list is to design a sign-in form on your web page. People who visit your site and are interested in learning more about your products and services will leave you their email addresses. Over time you’ll build a database of subscribers who signed up to hear from you. If you segment your subscribers depending on their preferences, you’ll need to design multiple email messages to send more relevant information to each audience.
Don’t Sell at Once
Don’t start selling in the first letter. In your first emails, you should talk about the customers’ problems and provide some useful information about your business. If you sell software, inform people about the latest releases, and include software reviews that you have read. Always keep the content of your emails in line with what people signed up for. Be careful at declaring that you are the solution for them until they have some trust and faith in you. You can remind them of your services at the end of your message.
Personalize Your Message
Your email message will look more professional and reputable if you personalize it by addressing your subscriber by name. A personalized message makes the impression that you value every subscriber and thoroughly prepared your email campaign.
Write in the Informal and Comprehensive Manner
Don’t make your message content too official and abstruse. Keep to the informal tone of writing. But don’t make it too chatty either. Find the golden mean. Write like you are telling a story. Avoid direct commands and obstinate requests. Include advice and suggestions by using phrases like “In our experience…”, “We discovered…”, “Our research shows…” etc.
Avoid using big attachments. They increase the size of your message and take some time to download. You should better unload the file that you intend to attach to your web site and give the link to it in your message. Those recipients who would be interested to see the attachment will download the file onto their computers. If you use links within the message, make sure they are working. Don’t use too many “I” and “We” in your message. Don’t focus much on yourself or your company regalia. Nobody is interested in your personal information. The content must be relevant and meet the customer’s interests.
Your subject line. It should be short and to the point.
And finally, how are people supposed to unsubscribe from your email list? Don’t forget to provide them with an unsubscribe link somewhere in your message.
Make it a rule always to read your email copy several times before you send it out. The nice idea is to have someone else read your message with a fresh look. It’s better to discover and correct any possible mistakes and typos beforehand rather than make your subscribers feel you lack precision.
Manage Bounces and Unsubscribes
You should be ready to receive bounced messages. People change the email addresses from time, and they may not notify you about it. So, you shouldn’t expect that your email message will reach all your subscribers. Remove bounced email addresses and the email addresses of those recipients who unsubscribed from your database or mailing list. This will help you maintain a database of those customers and prospects only who want to hear from you.
So, it turns out that the route to effective email marketing is not so easy and simple. It would help if you spent some effort and time to achieve success with your bulk email campaign. But it’s worth it.
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