What is bulk email?
Also known as email blast or mass email, bulk email is the act of sending the same email (or set of emails) to a lot of recipients in one go. It is typically done by businesses that have a mailing list to reach everyone who has opted-in to receive messages at the same time.
If you want more information on this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: Is bulk email the same as spam?
No, bulk email is not necessarily the same as spam.
Sure, in some cases, bulk email is also spam. But if it is sent exclusively to recipients who have explicitly expressed their consent to receiving it, then it does not qualify as spam. Keep in mind that for an email to be considered spam, it has to be unsolicited, regardless of its actual contents.
This is why if you want to make sure that your emails are not flagged as spam, it is important that you do not just send them to random recipients. You need to have an opt-in system in place that would allow you to automatically filter out people who do not wish to receive messages from you—that and another system that would allow people who have opted in before to opt out in case they change their mind later on.
Question #2: How do I send bulk email?
Bulk email is typically sent using an email marketing tool such as MailChimp.
These tools allow you to automate your bulk email marketing campaigns so you can send the exact emails you want to the exact recipients you want to get them at the exact time you want on autopilot. All you have to do is set each campaign up once and the tool will handle the rest.
It does not matter if you have one or one million people on your list—or if you have these people further grouped under different categories—once you have your bulk email campaigns properly set up, you can expect them to run smoothly with zero intervention from you or your team.
Question #3: Can I use my personal email address to send bulk email?
In theory, you can use your personal email address to send bulk email, but it is not a good idea to do so for two main reasons:
First, your personal email address most likely has a daily sending limit. If you are using Gmail, for example, that limit is 500. This means that if you want to use it to do email marketing, you can only reach a maximum of 500 people per day, which puts a hard cap on how effective your campaigns can be.
Second, regularly using your personal email address to send out emails in bulk may result in it being flagged for spam and blocked not only by the recipients’ mail server but yours too. Personal email addresses are simply not meant to be used for this purpose.
If you really want to run a bulk email campaign, you are still much better off using an actual email marketing tool.
Question #4: What types of emails can I send in bulk?
While you can technically send virtually any type of email you can think of in bulk, this approach is best used with:
- Welcome emails
- Marketing emails
- Notification emails
- Abandoned cart emails
- Sales emails
- And other similar types of emails
Question #5: How do I improve the open rate of my bulk emails?
You can improve the open rate of your bulk emails by doing three simple things:
First, make sure that your recipients have signed up to receive emails from you. As we have seen earlier, you can do this by having a proper opt-in system in place.
Second, make sure that you write clear, eye-catching subject lines.
Third, make sure that you only send out content that the people in your mailing list have signed up to receive.