Sending Mass Emails

There comes a time in your marketing campaign when you need to send mass emails. Doing it the right way can help you reach the target audience and avoid blacklists and spam folders.

Many people consider mass emails (synonymous with bulk emails) spam. However, with the right email marketing strategy, you can create high-quality messages and send them out in bulk successfully.

The outcome of your email marketing campaign often depends on how well you send bulk emails. Let’s take a closer look at how to do it the right way.

What is a Mass Email?

Mass email is designed to be sent to a large number of recipients. As part of an email marketing campaign, you may plan on sending mass email to different parts of your target audience, segmented by demographics, buying behavior, interaction with your website, and more.

Marketers use bulk emails to:

Promote a product
Make special offers to a specific segment of their target audience
Make an announcement

Hardly any of the mass emails are considered spam. If you have a substantial email list, sending messages to just one segment of the target audience may require mass emailing.

While mass email marketing used to be popular in the past, it’s not a common tactic today due to spam filters and precise audience segmentation. However, it can still work for your company if you follow a few simple rules.

Keep Your Email List Clean

The key to avoiding spam traps and blacklists while sending mass emails is keeping your mailing list clean. Some companies still prefer to buy email lists in order to reach the biggest group of potential customers.

However, besides containing invalid email addresses, these email lists are often ridden with spam traps. Spam email addresses send a signal to email providers to consider your address as a source of spam.

To keep your email list clean, you need to build it organically. Each time a potential client signs up for your newsletter or enters contact details into a web form, you have to make sure it’s valid.

Additionally, you should check the validity of your email list regularly. People tend to change addresses, lose passwords, or abandon email accounts. To make sure you aren’t sending emails into the void, it’s imperative to check the list’s integrity.

While it’s possible to do it manually, such checks are extremely time-consuming and not always accurate. Consider taking advantage of email validation software to get the job done quickly and accurately. Then you can send bulk emails without worrying about spam traps and blacklists.

Work on Your Domain and IP Reputation

No matter how personalized and spam-free you make your emails look, sending mass messages when you have a poor domain or IP reputation could get you into more trouble. Your domain and account reputation can suffer in case you aren’t using the best practicing for sending mass emails.

Here are a few ways to keep your domain and IP reputation in top shape:

1. Start Small

When you just start your email campaign, don’t rush into sending bulk emails. Limit the number of emails. After your highly personalized and well-designed messages reach clean email addresses and the recipients open them, your IP begins to build trust.

When you finally start sending bulk emails to your clean mailing list, the recipients’ email provider won’t consider it spam.

2. Send Emails Consistently

One of the reasons why your sender’s score and IP reputation could take a dive is erratic bulk email sending activity. If you send 100 emails per day for a week and none the next week, your actions may look suspicious.

When creating your email marketing plan, make sure to have an email sending schedule. Follow it closely to build a solid sender’s reputation.

3. Change Your IP

If you already have a poor IP reputation, the fastest way to rectify the situation is to change the address. However, this method can be time-consuming and nearly impossible and might not be worth your while.

4. Work on Your Domain Reputation

Since your email account is harder to change than IP, consider working on it so you can send bulk email without repercussions. Start by sending a bunch of emails to contacts you know and asking them to open the message and read it. If your emails end up in the spam folder, ask these recipients to remove them.

With time, your domain reputation will improve.

Working on your domain and IP reputation can help improve email deliverability, streamline your marketing campaign, and help with sending emails in bulk.

Make Your Emails Look Legitimate

To keep your email messages out of the spam folder, it’s imperative to make them look legitimate. This is especially important when you need to send a bulk email.

When mapping out your email campaign, take the time to set strict guidelines for content. Just like when writing articles for your content marketing campaign, you need to ensure the quality and validity of your emails.

Here are the things to keep in mind when you plan to send emails in bulk:

Avoid attachments. If you must send an attachment, make sure it’s not suspicious. Ideally, you should only send attachments to recipients who already know that you are a trusted source.
Avoid spelling mistakes. Any obvious spelling mistake in your message makes it look suspicious.
Ask subscribers on your mailing lists to whitelist your address.
Always follow the CAN-SPAM act guidelines to make your email messages appear legit.
Always ask permission to send an email (i.e. recipients should know that they can get an email from you).
Work on your subject line. Spammy subject lines are written in CAPS and use salesy language.
Make it easy to unsubscribe from your email list. If a person wants to unsubscribe, it means they won’t bring you any profit. Just the opposite, the next time they see an email from you, they’ll click the spam button.

Take the time to proofread your emails. Make sure the content you use when you send bulk messages is high-quality and error-free.

How to Send Bulk Email in Gmail

The bulk message sending procedure depends on the email service you use. If you want to send mass emails using Gmail email, you can follow these simple steps:

Create the email list for your Gmail account.
Import email list from a CSV file (keep in mind that you can only send to 2,000 addresses at once)
Compose the message (make sure to follow guidelines to improve deliverability).
Send the email or save it as a draft.

You can also schedule the time you want the messages to appear in your recipients’ inbox. Whether you want to send an email in 24 hours or 2 weeks, the email service allows it. This can be helpful if you already know when the best time to send messages for your users is.

How to Send Bulk Messages in Outlook

This provider makes it easy to send emails to numerous users. A simple way to do it is to follow these steps:

Write your email in Word
In Word, open the “Mailings” tab
Click “Start mail merge”
Select recipients
Choose “finish and merge”
Click “send email messages”

You have several ways to add your mailing list to Outlook:

Type contacts manually
Use an existing list (upload a CSV file from your computer)
Choose from existing Outlook contacts

Remember, just like Gmail and other electronic mail services, Outlook has its limits. The number of emails you can send daily is limited to 300. You need to keep this in mind when choosing a way to send messages and planning your email marketing campaigns.

Why You Shouldn’t Send Mass Email Messages

While bulk messages can help your marketing campaign, sending emails to multiple recipients has its downsides. Here are a few reasons why you may want to consider a more personal approach:

You shouldn’t send bulk messages if you don’t have experience doing it. This could lead to blacklists, poor sender’s score, damaged reputation, and much more.
It’s hard to make mass emails personal, so such messages don’t always benefit your marketing campaign.
Many email service providers automatically block mass messages from Gmail and Outlook.
Your email service provider may not handle the volume of messages you are planning to send. Make sure to check this in advance.

Mass emailing requires a carefully organized and a well-thought-out campaign. If you haven’t done this, consider avoiding this tactic.

The Takeaway

When planning your email campaign, mass emails may seem like a great way to reach a large target audience. However, this strategy can only work if you know how to send these emails. The process may be tricky. One mistake could cost you your IP reputation and result in other unfortunate consequences.

Before designing a mass mailing campaign, go over the best practices to learn how to do it carefully and achieve your marketing goals.