These are the Key Success Factors for Sending Bulk Emails

1. These goals are achieved by sending mass emails
2. Online tools are ideal for mass mailing
3. Sending mass emails - what you should consider
4. These disadvantages bear mass emails
5. Your alternative to mass emails: Why segmented email marketing is more efficient
6. Quality over quantity: So you send segmented newsletters with rapidmail

Often the motto is 'more is more' when it comes to shipping advertising. The hope behind sending mass emails is usually to increase your sales by contacting a wide range of your customers. Although creating such an advertising email may seem simple and cost-effective at first glance, the 'quantity over quality' variant is very inefficient. To achieve your goal of increasing sales, you should instead rely on a segmented email marketing strategy when you want to send mass emails. Through this, you can significantly reduce your costs and increase the likelihood of response, which in turn can be reflected in your sales numbers.

But what exactly is a mass email? Basically, this term refers to the distribution of your information and advertising messages by email - and to as many customers as possible at the same time. In this, you forego personalisations in order to be able to address as many recipients as possible at the same time. You can achieve this type of communication most quickly by using a corresponding email tool. You will find out how sensible an advertising solution is for all your customers in the following sections.

These goals are achieved by sending mass emails

Companies usually use the medium of the mass email to convince as many customers as possible at the same time and quickly of certain products, special offers or even courses. By creating enthusiasm among your recipients with a well-written email, they should be prompted to take action. This could be participation in an event, the purchase of a product or the subscription of your software, for example. The objectives of your mass email strategy can therefore be different. On the one hand, you can bind existing customers to your company, win new customers or increase your company's turnover by selling more products and services. Furthermore, if you want to send mass emails, you can reactivate former customers and expand your reputation and expert status with your target group.

Online tools are ideal for mass mailing

In order to distribute your offers and information to the target groups you have defined, an efficient solution is required. Mass email software enables you to send quickly and without complications. In theory, almost any mailing tool currently available on the software market is suitable for sending mass emails - such as the email marketing expert rapidmail. With free mailing templates, you can reach large recipient groups with little effort and create a newsletter in your company design with just a few clicks. A mass email tool also provides you with the ability to conduct A/B tests to determine which version of your mailing best suits the tastes of your customers. In addition, you can use personalisation and subject line checks to improve your marketing. When you are finished and have correctly created the recipient list, you can send your mailing on its journey through the World Wide Web within a few minutes.

Sending mass emails - what you should consider

However, there are some do's and don'ts that you should keep in mind before you send mass emails. In many companies, there is a misconception that it would be more effective to send their own advertising messages without personalisation. However, your customers are so surrounded by so much advertising that they inevitably have to select in order to keep track. An email with a personalised greeting or offers that refer to your customers' last purchases will stand out more positively than a generic email. An email is ultimately a sales tool, so the same rules apply to it as for a good sales conversation - listen, repeat and then create the appropriate offer. By incorporating personal components into your mass emails, your customers will feel valued and more receptive to your offers because you are taking their customer journey into account.

In your mass mail programme, you should only import email addresses that your customers have given you freely. Do not resort to purchased email addresses - this would negatively impact the reputation of your company. Although buying and selling mail addresses is not illegal, the use of bought email addresses is, as you are sending emails to your non-customers without their consent. If this does not exist, your mailing program will block the address. This can lead to a general deterioration in the deliverability of subsequent emails. So be sure to get the express permission of your recipients for your advertising emails before you start a mass email campaign. The easiest way to do this is, for example, when you subscribe to your newsletter or during the purchase process. With some email marketing tools, you can already integrate the consent field for receiving email advertising into the newsletter registration form. Your customers then confirm once again via the double opt-in procedure that they really want to receive your messages. This consent is documented electronically by your mailing tool and you can send your electronic mail legally.

These disadvantages bear mass emails

However, sending mass emails also brings with it some other pitfalls that you should not ignore.

• Poor deliverability: When you send mass emails, you may end up in your recipients' spam folders instead of their inboxes. One reason for this could be, for example, that you are addressing inactive email addresses. This reduces the deliverability of your mails, as they are not opened and the links are not clicked on. In the worst case, this could mean that you are completely blocked by the email provider, as they permanently declare your emails as inappropriate advertising.
• Lack of segmentation: Not every one of your topics is interesting for all of your customers. Therefore, always ensure that you provide your contacts with relevant and interesting content to read your mailings. Because if your emails are not read or, in the worst case, marked as spam, your newsletters may not be able to be delivered to your target group in the long term. Segmentation in email marketing therefore directly affects the success of your mass emails.
• Lack of personalisation: As already mentioned, your customers can usually identify mass emails quite quickly if you use general formulations and do not take advantage of the opportunity to personalise. This removes the incentive to read your email. By addressing them directly with their first or last name, you increase the likelihood of reading and can contribute to a large number of recipients reading the newsletter eagerly with individually tailored content.
• Low chance of long-term customer loyalty: Since you do not build direct contact with your target group via your mass emails and do not engage with it, it can become difficult over time to find out which content and topics are really relevant for them. As a result, the continuous sending of mass emails can also become uninteresting for you and your colleagues.
• Additional costs: If you write to all recipients whose email addresses you have instead of a clearly defined target group, this results in significantly higher costs and wastage for your mass email dispatch. With clear segmentation, you can reduce these costs.

Creating mass emails may be significantly faster than sending a target group-oriented newsletter. However, with this variant, you must expect lower opening rates, categorisation as spam and behaviour that may be unlawful in the absence of advertising consent.

Your alternative to mass emails: Why segmented email marketing is more efficient

So what alternative is there to anonymous mass emails? The answer is: advertising messages that are individually adapted to your prospects and recipients. This type of advertising is then no longer referred to as mass mail dispatch, but as targeted direct marketing. The decisive advantage of this email marketing is that you can design these mailings personally and thus adapt them to the individual interests of your target group. This makes direct marketing in the form of email marketing one of the most efficient marketing channels and a better alternative to mass emails.

The simplest way to provide your customers with suitable and relevant content is through segmented newsletter dispatch. Here you divide your recipients into different groups. This increases the likelihood of hitting their interests and delivering relevant content. This in turn leads to more opening of the newsletter and supports you in getting closer to your email marketing goals. For the subdivision of your contacts, you can use the following categories, for example:

• Location: If you have different company locations, you can start special promotions for these, for example. An offer for the Berlin location is uninteresting for customers from Hamburg or Düsseldorf. On the other hand, you can offer them special offers at their place of residence.
• Industry: The industry of your customers can serve as another segmentation criterion. Even if you send generally relevant information, you should nevertheless send different marketing emails that are specifically tailored to a particular industry.
• Gender: If your company sells gender-specific products, such as clothing or cosmetics, the segmented sending of advertising emails is a sensible marketing tool. This ensures that in future only those contacts who really want to receive it will receive newsletters about women's clothing, which will be reflected positively in the opening rate.
• Age: It may be that certain products from your range, such as anti-aging creams, are only of interest to certain age groups. For this reason, the age of your customers can also represent a sensible segmentation criterion.
• Language: In case you have customers all over the world, you should adjust your newsletters linguistically to the respective countries to ensure that the right messages are conveyed and your emails thus remain relevant for the recipients.

Target group-oriented advertising offers you many advantages

Quality over quantity: So you send segmented newsletters with rapidmail

You don't have to be tech pros to send segmented and personalised newsletters. Because with the email marketing software rapidmail you create your first mailing quite intuitively within a few minutes.

This is how you create segmented marketing emails

Divide your recipient lists into different segments. For this, demographic characteristics like age, place of residence, or profession are best. But you can also segment according to your customers' buying behaviour. These could be customers, for example, who have clicked on a link in your last mailing or have bought a certain product in the last months. Based on the recipient list created in this way, you can see at a glance how many prospects your newsletter will be delivered to.

With the email marketing tool rapidmail, you can divide your recipient lists into different segments according to demographic characteristics or previous recipient behaviour. A segmented dispatch based on "has clicked in a mailing" is, for example, useful if
in the first mailing an e-book for downloading is integrated. If subscribers have clicked on the
Download button, you could then thank your contacts based on this in the follow-up mailing and ask how they liked the e-book.

If you have divided your contacts in the Recipient Lists area into different segments, in the overview you can see how many recipients from your list each segment comprises. With rapidmail, the finished mail can then be sent to selected, segmented recipient groups from this list.

Then assign key words, so-called tags, to your contacts to further refine your e-mail marketing. This could be interests (women's fashion/men's fashion) or buyer groups (existing/new customer), for example. Due to these two functions, you can further subdivide your target groups and then use them for your targeted newsletter dispatch with precise content.

With the tagging function of rapidmail, you can assign different keywords to your contacts. This so-called "Tagging" targets the differing interests (e.g. women vs. men's fashion) or the buying behaviour (e.g. budget height) of your contacts.

If you want to send a mailing with rapidmail, you can not only select entire recipient lists, but also restrict the sending to selected segments and / or
Keyword groups. By doing so, you increase the likelihood that the recipients will also become interested readers in the long term.

In practice, the whole thing could look something like this: You
want to start a campaign for your new Q10 face cream. First of all, you set up
the recipient segment "Age >40 years". Within this customer segment
you send a mailing to the keyword group "Existing customers" with the
information that there is a new cream in your assortment, what this cream
can do and what ingredients it has. You can prepare another mailing for the
contacts you have tagged with "former customers". In addition to the same information about your Q10 face cream, this newsletter contains a 20 % discount voucher to reactivate customers.

With rapidmail, not only can you create professional newsletters, but you can also directly design individual and DSGVO-compliant newsletter sign-up forms. In these, you can already ask for the preferences of your customers when they register.

In such a registration form, you can also directly obtain consent to your newsletter.

As a result, these interests are assigned to your new contacts from the start as keywords, making your segmented newsletter dispatch straightforward from the start and providing real added value for your customers.

Also feel free to visit our software review platform OMR Reviews for more insights and experience reports on the software category Email Marketing. There, in addition to rapidmail, you will find many other providers who support you, among other things, in sending and segmenting newsletters.