Because bulk mail is communication your customers want to receive, the possibilities are nearly endless. With a little bit of ingenuity and the right system, you can use bulk email to send, among others:
- Newsletters
- Marketing creative
- Announcements
- Invitations
- Surveys
Seth Godin, a respected internet expert, refers to email marketing as “permission marketing.” If your contacts and prospective customers give you permission to send them mail, you have a wonderful opportunity to build a relationship of trust with them.
When you take care to execute email marketing properly, you will show your customers that you care about them and that you respect their privacy. By guarding their personal information and protecting their privacy, you protect the relationship that you have with them.
Bulk email has some more pragmatic benefits too, like:
- Cost saving (gone are the days of stuffing leaflets into post boxes and gates)
- Saving time by only communicating with people who are already interested in what you have to offer
- Helps you refine your campaigns by sending different emails to segments of your contacts with different interests
What are the pitfalls of bulk email?
Well, we’ve mentioned it before, and you’ve most certainly encountered it. The biggest pitfall of bulk email is SPAM. Nobody wants to get spam, and you certainly don’t want to be sending spam.
The trouble is that spam isn’t only adverts for pills. Any email that a consumer doesn’t want to receive is considered spam. That means that you, as an email sender, have to take careful steps to make sure that you are not sending unwanted email. For more info on SPAM, read our SPAM guide.
Another pitfall is that your recipients might seem to be unresponsive. You’ll spend hours laying out a gorgeous email, carefully composing the content, and you might see a low opening rate. Unfortunately, that’s just the nature of email. Most subscribers sign up to lists, follow them for a little while, and then drop off. However, it’s still worth doing for the people who are interested and engaged, and the more you focus on relevant content, the more engaged your audience will become… The bottom line: email marketing can be a very satisfying and effective way to communicate with your customers. It is well worth the time and effort to learn how to do it properly. We look forward to taking this journey with you.
