Creating a broadcast email campaign
An email campaign consists of a single email that is mass delivered to a target audience with a goal in mind. This goal might be to increase sales, spread awareness, or inspire your target audience to take action. Creating an email campaign requires that you know what motivates your recipients and hone an email message according to those motivations.
Instructions
Bulk Email Campaign
1. Pick a topic and target audience. Before you worry about the mechanics of an email campaign, consider who you're emailing and what you want them to do. It is vital to know your target audience and what motivates them, and then send them an email that inspires them to take a specific action or actions. If you're an online store, you could target teens to purchase young adult novels. If you're a non-profit, then you could focus on your charity's supporters to increase attendance at a rally.
2. Obtain contact lists. A contact list is a collection of personal contact information for your customers or supporters, including email addresses. You may already have a contact list as part of your company or organization. If not, then you may need to purchase a list from a marketing company that specializes in selling contact lists containing specific demographics. You might also trade contact lists with other partner companies or organizations.
3. Choose a broadcast email service provider. Broadcast email services can either be hosted or non-hosted. Hosted services exist entirely on a third-party website and allow you to create, send, and monitor emails without worrying about programming and security. Non-hosted bulk email products exist as downloadable software that you must manually install on your own website server, and be maintained by you.
4. Create both an HTML and text version of your email. HTML messages typically contain images and design elements similar to those found on a website. Email rendered in HTML format can be very creative and convey your message effectively. That said, some email clients or corporate firewalls will not permit HTML email. So, you will need to design a plain-text version of your HTML email that can be sent to these email clients. While boring when compared to HTML, it's better to deliver a plain text email to your recipient than no email at all.
5. Upload your contact list and email message to the broadcast email service. Once you have selected a broadcast email service, you will follow your provider's instructions on upload a contact list, and then create your email campaign.
6. Deliver your email and measure the results. Follow the instructions provided by your broadcast email service to deliver your message to your target audience. Most broadcast email services include the ability to send a test messge to yourself or a group of email addresses to ensure that everything looks and works the way you intended. Take advantage of this feature before sending your email to the real target recipients! Most broadcast email services also allow you to view real-time statistics showing how many people opened your email, what links they clicked, and who made a purchase or followed through on your desired goal for that email. Use these statics to refine future emails to improve your results.
Tags: broadcast email, target audience, your email, broadcast email service, contact list