Email Blast Marketing — A Viable Marketing Method or Spam?

Source: Lauren Mancke @Unsplash

What do you think of first when someone uses the term email blast marketing?

For many people, the first association is spam. The fact that the method is often frowned upon shouldn’t be surprising, considering the way it was used in the past and how it’s still applied by many marketers. 

Email blasts have a bad reputation because they started as campaigns for generating clicks without incorporating lead generation strategies. With no segmentation and personalization, the line between spam and promotional material was muddled. 

The technology has advanced significantly since then, but some marketers still use blast emails the old way, making the practice look bad.

The question you are probably asking is — Should I use email blast marketing to reach my audience or should I avoid it at all costs? Let’s look for the answer.

Does Email Blast Marketing Work?

The primary difference between an email marketing campaign and email blast marketing is that the former consists of lead nurturing email sequences while the latter focuses on sending a single email to all of your subscribers at the same time. 

If done right, email blast marketing can be an effective method for reaching a large number of recipients simultaneously. The most common goal of email blasts is to inform your contacts about urgent news and events, such as:

• Updates regarding terms or service

• Alerts in case of system downtimes and security breaches

• Announcements about sales and discounts 

Email marketing campaigns and email blast marketing can work hand in hand to make up a robust email marketing strategy. Plenty of email marketing software solutions enable you to segment and personalize your email blasts, and make them resonate with your audience.

In this article, we’re going to help you learn how to create and send efficient email blasts. We’re also going to present you with a list of the best tools for the job. Let’s dive right in.

How To Create and Prepare an Email Blast List

If you don’t want your email blasts to be labeled as spam, you need to create and prepare a proper email list. This includes:

1. Ensuring that you’ve got your recipients’ permission to email them

2. Maintaining and cleaning your email list regularly

Ensuring That You’ve Got Your Recipients’ Permission To Email Them

Email is a permission-based channel of communication. This means that you need to ensure that your recipients want to receive your promotional messages. Sending unsolicited email blasts is not only guaranteed to get you labeled as a spammer and ruin your reputation, but it’s also against the law. Every type of email campaign must align with applicable regulations. The most common ones are:

• The CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing) Act

• The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

If you don’t comply with these regulations, you can get into serious trouble. Consider the fact that every single email that violates the CAN-SPAM Act can be penalized for up to $41,484. Take that number into account and multiply it by how many hundreds or thousands of emails you send in a single blast.

Here are the rules governed by the CAN-SPAM Act that you need to follow:

1. Ensure that the recipients are aware of who you are

2. Use a clear and honest subject line

3. Present your message as an apparent ad

4. Include your company’s physical address

5. Make it easy for users to unsubscribe

6. Honor opt-outs within at least ten business days

7. Monitor what other parties do on your behalf

If you’re sending email blasts to cold leads, the best solution is to include a CTA or link that leads to a subscription form. That way, you’ll ensure that your email list consists of recipients that have given you their permission to send them promotional emails. Make sure that the form is clear and straightforward so that users know what they’re signing up for.

Maintaining and Cleaning Your Lists Regularly

You need to remove all the people that decided to unsubscribe from your email list as soon as possible. You also need to get rid of any invalid email addresses. Plenty of subscribers change their addresses over time. Sending emails to those accounts is a waste of both your time and money. Some of them become spam traps that can damage your IP reputation.

You also need to take care of inactive leads. You can try to reconnect with them through a re-engagement email campaign. If that doesn’t work, you need to remove them from your list. 

If you’ve got low open and click-through rates or high bounce and spam complaint rates, you need to clean your list as soon as possible. The best course of action is to manage your list regularly, instead of waiting to see any negative impacts.

How To Segment Your Email Blast List

Source: Adeolu Eletu @Unsplash

Email list segmentation is a crucial practice for any kind of email marketing campaign. It consists of dividing your list based on relevant factors such as:

• User actions

• Behavioral patterns

• Personal characteristics

This enables you to make your emails relevant to different groups of recipients. Even though blast emails carry the same message, segmentation enables you to personalize various elements according to the contacts’ needs and interests. 

Many email software solutions allow you to create dynamic content for specific contact groups. You can set up different CTAs leading to landing page variants that are most likely to resonate with particular subscribers. 

Keep in mind that segmented emails that target a specific audience generate 58% of all the revenue.

Emails can be personalized on an even deeper level. You can set up personalization elements — such as the recipients’ name, job title, and company name — to be inserted automatically into an email’s body text or subject line. This turns a generic message into a more personal one, making your contacts feel like they’re talking to a human being. 

It goes as far as the fact that 52% of customers say that they’ll look for a solution elsewhere if an email isn’t personalized.

How To Track Your Email Blast Campaign Results

To ensure that your email blast marketing efforts are paying off, you need to track the crucial metrics. This includes the:

• Open rate

• Click-through rate

• Bounce rate

• Conversion rate

• Unsubscribe rate

Keeping track of these factors can help you determine which aspects of your campaigns you need to improve. 

Your email open rate can help you find out how many qualified leads you’re sending your message to. The click-through rate commonly depends on how compelling your CTA and copy are. A high bounce rate most often means that you’re emailing too many non-existent accounts. If you’re not getting enough conversions, you may want to try improving your list segmentation.

In case that there’s a lot of users unsubscribing from your mailing list, you might have to redefine your email blast marketing strategy. While people are always going to unsubscribe, you need to pay attention to spikes in unsubscription rates.

The Pros and Cons of Email Blast Marketing

Here’s an overview of some of the most important pros and cons of email blast marketing:

To be able to apply email blast marketing as a viable method, you need to find the right software. We reviewed a wide range of solutions and selected the best mass email tools on the market for you to choose from.

Sell SaaS

Sell SaaS Homepage

Our Sell SaaS software bundle provides an assortment of different tools. 

This includes our email campaign creator. You can use it to create customized email campaigns in a simple online editor. There is no limit on how many emails you can send. You can send email blasts, set up triggers, and schedule your email campaigns. 

There is also a tracking feature that enables you to determine the deliverability rates of your emails.

The email campaign creator goes hand in hand with our lead generation tools. This includes:

Sendinblue

Sendinblue Homepage

Sendinblue is an email marketing platform that enables you to send blast emails and automate email campaigns.

You can create your emails from scratch or choose from a vast assortment of customizable templates. You can also upload your premade HTML designs. The platform provides a simple drag-and-drop editor for quick and simple campaign creation. 

Sendinblue enables you to perform list segmentation and implement a wide range of personalization elements. You can also craft eye-catching subscription forms and align them with your emails. This way, you can create email blasts for highly targeted contact groups.

You can A/B test your campaigns to generate the best possible results, and use the analytics feature to track crucial metrics, such as your emails’:

• Open rate

• Click-through rate

• Deliverability rate

The platform’s pricing is based on the number of emails you can send. The free version allows you to use the majority of the platform’s essential features, but you can only send 300 emails per day. 

For additional features and more extensive sending options, you need to subscribe to one of the paid plans, ranging from $25 to $65 per month.

Amazon SES

Amazon SES Homepage

Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) is a cloud-based email marketing platform. While not as easy to use as other email marketing software in this article, it’s both a powerful and affordable solution for sending email blasts. 

The platform enables you to create and send personalized emails with high deliverability rates. You can track every email via the advanced dashboard that provides you with real-time analytics. 

There are three methods for sending emails. You can do so by using the:

• Amazon SES console

• SMTP interface

• Amazon SES API

You have the option to send blast emails through the default IP addresses shared with other Amazon SES users or by leasing a dedicated IP address. The platform also provides the so-called Bring Your Own IP option for using any IP addresses that you already own.

You can integrate the platform with any other AWS (Amazon Web Services) solution, such as AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management).

Amazon SES charges you $0.10 for every 1,000 emails sent. If you use the platform via the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), you can send up to 62,000 emails per month free of charge.

SendGrid

SendGrid Homepage

SendGrid is a robust email marketing platform that focuses on advanced customization features.

You can choose from one of the many pre-made templates and edit a wide range of elements via the handy drag-and-drop editor. For more tech-savvy users, there’s also a code editor that allows you to create your emails from the get-go.

You can A/B test your emails, track their performance in real-time, and overview detailed reports on metrics such as:

• Bounce rates

• Unsubscribe rates

• Spam complaint rates

You can manage your contact lists for sending blast emails and automate workflows for lead nurturing email campaigns. The platform also enables you to create custom landing pages for increased conversion rates.

SendGrid enables you to integrate the platform with other software solutions via its APIs. You can also send emails by using custom domains and dedicated IP addresses.

The free version allows you to use most of the crucial features and send 100 emails per day. 

The paid plans include additional features and have scalable pricing that depends on how many emails you need to send per month. The Essentials paid plan starts at $14.95, while the more extensive Pro plan starts at $89.95 per month.

MailJet

MailJet Homepage

Mailjet is a handy email service provider that enables you to create highly personalized email blasts via a user-friendly editor.

There is a vast assortment of templates to choose from, with the focus on creating engaging newsletters. You can insert various personalization elements and manage your contact lists. 

The tool includes a detailed analytics feature that allows you to track your results in real-time and optimize your emails. You can also perform A/B tests.

You can send emails via MailJet’s SMTP relay or the Mailgun API.

Using the tool is easy not only because of its intuitive UI, but also because the company provides extensive guides, documentation, and online customer support.

The free version enables you to send 6,000 emails per month, with a daily limit of 200 emails. 

The paid plans range from $9.65 to $20.95 per month, providing you with additional features such as list segmentation, marketing automation, and multi-user collaboration.

Conclusion

Our Sell SaaS software solutions take the #1 place on the list because we offer a special deal. When it comes to our tools, you’ve got two options. You can:

1. Use them

2. Resell them

Using Sell SaaS Software

Sell SaaS provides a variety of solutions, including outreach, automation, and lead generation tools. If you sign up for any of the products’ monthly paid plans, you get to use all of their features with no restrictions. 

Reselling Sell SaaS Software

We offer you the opportunity to create an additional stream of revenue by branding our tools and reselling them at a price you get to dictate.

There are no additional fees included. Your only obligation is to share a percentage of your sales with us. You get to earn between 60% and 80% of all the revenue, depending on our partnership level. The rule is simple — the more you sell, the more money goes to you.