While occasionally you do want to send a common email to your entire distribution list, sending specific messages to targeted email lists can be more effective because each of your prospects are seeing the most relevant messages, and messages they are most likely to respond to. 

A great tactic to add to your marketing campaign is targeted email lists, which segments your contacts into specific categories.  Better response rates lead to increased conversion rates, which is the ultimate goal of any marketing campaign.  As explained by Ina Steiner, co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes, “Segmenting email contacts vastly improves the ability to target your message, which helps improve the open-rate and click-throughs on links in your email. Over the long-term, it increases personalized rapport and long-lasting, profitable relationships with customers.”

Email lists can be filtered along pretty much any category, such as:

• Demographics – if your product or service offerings can be separated demographically, such as by industry, location, economic status, gender or age, you can create targeted email lists for your relevant demographics.
• Previous Purchases – You can build an email list of customers that have purchased a specific product to alert them to updates on the product, or to upsell the customer to another product.
• Documented Interests – If a customer has shown interested in a certain product or services by requesting information, attending a webinar, or downloading a white paper, you can send them a targeted email to let them know about products related to those information products.

The most effective categories for targeted email lists for your business will depend on your specific company products and/or services, and other variables.  Emily Keye, Marketing Strategist for Bronto Software adds, “You won’t have the best offer for every subscriber every time, but the more frequently you reach consumers with deals matched to their interests and preferences, the more you’ll set yourself apart and be remembered as the company that ‘knows what I like’.”

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Email is one of the fastest ways to get a message out to a prospect list, but can have a lot of quirks in development.  As an example, say you’re sending a postcard mailer to your direct mail list.  While you could theoretically personalize the content, the postcard itself is the same size and shape, is delivered the same way (via US Mail), and is read in the same way by all its recipients.

On the other hand, an email can be delivered via computer, tablet, or smartphone, viewed in a half a dozen or more different web browsers, and your prospects may limit how they receive graphics in their email. As a result, your message could end up being viewed in ways you never expected.

This is a great reason to use bulk email marketing services when you want to deliver an email message to your customers. A company that specializes in developing and sending email can do the following:

• Design an email message and layout that will be viewed by the maximum number of people.  This means that the content is compatible with a wide variety of browsers and mail programs, and will still provide the message effectively on smartphones and to customers who choose to receive text-only emails.
• Deliver your message using mechanisms that won’t label your message as spam.
• Help you to maintain your email list to minimize bad addresses and to make sure your messages are consistently read.
• Help you to collect statistics on how effective your email messages are and work with you to improve their effectiveness.

Bulk email marketing can be used in so many ways, from standard advertising to trigger emails and simple thank you messages.  Using bulk email marketing services can help ensure that your email is read and acted on.

Image – © fuzzbones – Fotolia.com

Bulk emailing as part of your marketing process seems easy, fast, and effective. The problem is that your recipients don’t always see it that way. Potential customers are quick to label unsolicited email as spam, and internet service providers (ISPs) have stepped in to reduce the amount of spam that reaches their customer’s inbox.

While a lot of unwanted email is truly spam, you may have a legitimate message you want to send out. Below are a few tips to ensure that your bulk emailing efforts are not labeled as spam. While you could argue that these tips are sort of common sense, they are very important, so we felt it was worth writing about them.

1. Use a legitimate email service. If you try to send one email to a huge list of people from your standard email program, like Microsoft Outlook, your own ISP might stop the process. Bulk emailing services and programs stagger email delivery into smaller chunks so email services aren’t overwhelmed and your email isn’t labeled as spam before it leaves your ISP.

2. Learn the conditions that trigger spam filters. Many spam filters assign a score to certain triggers and add up the scores. If the total score exceeds a certain threshold, the email is labeled as spam. Some of these triggers include: heavy use of HTML, specific “unwanted” keywords, subject lines that include text in all capitals and generic salutations, such as “Dear friend”.

3. Work with a professional company to create your email. A firm that is experienced with email marketing will know what to include and what to avoid when creating your campaigns. As a result, your emails are more likely to be read by your recipients and not end up caught by a spam filter.

This post obviously just scratches the surface of increasing email deliverability. Do you have any tips you’d like to add? Comment below.