Bulk emailing sometimes gets a bad rap. A lot of people feel that bulk email is synonymous with spam, but that really couldn’t be further from the truth. In this article we’ll look at bulk emailing in South Africa and how using an email marketing platform can help you send out email campaigns that deliver results to suit your needs.
From the inception of email marketing, people harnessing the power of email marketing have wanted to find ways to email a large group of people at once. As technology has advanced, thousands of email platforms have hit the market, making it much easier to reach a large audience at once. Gone are the days of having to manually add multiple email addresses one by one when sending out your newsletters or latest product release.
Bulk emailing is simply the process of sending emails to a large group of recipients at once. You can send as many emails as you’d like (based on the plan and platform you choose) and also what your budget allows.
One of the main things to note when sending out bulk emails is that you need to keep in mind that you only want to send emails out to subscribers who have opted-in to receive communication from you.
Sending out unsolicited emails is bad practice, illegal and also makes you a spammer. Besides the above, it won’t get you the results you are seeking as you’ll be reaching out to an audience that isn’t interested in what your business has to offer.
If you’re looking to start your email marketing journey or send out amazing email marketing campaigns to your current email list, let’s recap why sending email campaigns can be beneficial to your business.
Most people have email addresses and therefore email is a very accessible marketing tool. Email marketing is also an extremely affordable marketing tool and the costs involved are usually tied to the number of subscribers you have. You can usually choose to buy email credits or pay a monthly subscription based on the number of subscribers you have.
It can be really easy to set up your campaigns and doesn’t require a high-level of skills or equipment. All you need is a stable internet connection and a computer or laptop. It’s that simple. If you’re unsure how to design your campaigns, you can use one of our email templates as a starting point.
Yes, email marketing is easy to start.
The first step is to sign up for your free Mail Blaze trial. Once you’ve signed up you’ll be able to go through all our platform has to offer and get a feel for how everything works.
You are then allowed to send up to 2 email campaigns during the 2 week trial to up to a 1000 subscribers to ensure you are happy with how the system functions.
Once you have officially signed up, we would recommend paying special attention to the list section and customise all your forms and subscription workflows. You will find all the information you need about customizing your form in our article about subscription workflows.
How to streamline your subscription workflow in Mail Blaze
Now that you’ve sorted out your subscription workflow you’ll want to verify your domain. Verification helps you tell email service providers like Outlook, Gmail and Yahoo (amongst others) that you are allowed to send emails from your domain. This specifically improves your email deliverability and helps to protect you from scammers who try and impersonate your brand.
If you do not manage your own domain, you can send verification instructions to your domain and hosting provider for them to implement on your behalf.
Verify your domain instructions
An email campaign serves to help you reach a goal. Email goals differ based on your business’s unique needs. You need to ensure that you define your campaign goals and then create your campaign to support that.
A beautiful campaign is great, but a fully functioning working campaign is better. Whenever you need to choose between whether to keep design elements or have a fully functioning email - you should always choose to have fully functional emails. Different email clients render email campaigns differently. This means that the design you might envision may not always completely appear in an email client in exactly the same way.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see results fast, but buying an email list is never a good idea. Not only will it affect your brand reputation but it will also affect your performance and deliverability.
Well done on starting your email marketing journey, now you need to make sure that you promote your list. This means actively asking customers to sign up to your list through all the marketing channels you have available to you.
Part of online marketing is to ensure that you create the best possible online experience for your customers. This means customising various parts of your subscription workflows to match your company branding as well as to ensure they have a seamless experience with you.
This includes double-checking the links you are directing your subscribers to. There is nothing more frustrating for a subscriber than to take the next step to click through to your website only to be led to a broken page on your website. You also need to make sure that you always proofread your emails before you hit send. Spelling and grammar errors can negatively affect your brand and impact the trust relationship you are trying to build with your audience.
Calls to action are crucial for the success of your email campaigns. Calls to action help to direct your subscriber to a next step or desired action, for example to buy a product. Calls to action should be clear and should stand out from your other content.
A lot of beginner email marketers are scared to use imagery in their emails as they are scared that it will affect how their campaigns perform. Images can have an effect on your email delivery, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use them. Well placed images can enhance your message and lead to a better experience for your audience. You just need to ensure you are following best practice and optimise your images.
Campaign planning doesn’t have to be complicated, but it can help you run better campaigns. When you do a campaign planning session, you’ll feel more confident and equipped to run email marketing campaigns and you’ll be able to ensure that you run your campaigns frequently.
Want to learn more about email marketing and what Mail Blaze has to offer, reach out to [email protected] today.
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