Bulk Email Does Not Mean Spam

More often than not, people mistake bulk e-mail and spam to be one and the same. Upon a closer look, the two-although have obvious similarities-are quite different. There seems to be a thin line dividing the two, and a little mistake on your part can convert bulk mail to spam.

For the purpose of leveling the playing field, there is a need to operationally define the two terms used. First stop, spam e-mails. These refer to unsolicited identical messages sent to several recipients who have not given their approval or have given approval through some underhanded method of receiving such messages. On the contrary, bulk e-mail involves a similar process of sending promotional messages at the same time to several recipients found in a mailing list. Therefore, the one thing which differentiates one from the other is the matter of obtaining permission from the contacts.

The fact is that the sending of bulk e-mails remains to be the cheapest of the online marketing strategies. This sending of e-mails is facilitated by a blast service or specialized software. There is a danger in this because the mailing lists used by such services can be flawed. Sometimes e-mail addresses found in mailing lists have not given their permission to receive promotional messages or have requested such information a long time ago such that the e-mail may be classified as spam.

Despite the many similarities between the two, you have to be very careful in subscribing to a service which will provide you with a ready-made mailing list. The least of your worries in sending of spam messages is that they can go to waste, them being channeled to the trash instead of being sent to the inbox. The worst case scenario is that you lose your business altogether and even pay penalties such as fines and imprisonment. To maximize your e-mail marketing efforts via sending of bulk e-mail, ensure that what you have is indeed a legitimate mailing list by employing the below listed measures:

Ask, ask, and ask. Verify whether or not the mailing list service is gold from previous customers. The beauty with online marketing is that you can get hold of any information you wish. Do not rely so much with testimonials and reviews. Although, many come up with a useful analysis of the service being provided, many are paid to write a good review. The first thing to look into is negative reports about the service. Because people have become very vocal about their experiences, chances are that you will find a few reports of why not to enroll in such mailing list service. If you find none, then you are good to go.

Try it out first. You can subscribe to the service which provides you with the lowest number of contacts in a mailing list just to have a feel of the service. You will see from the reports how many of the total number of customers have received the e-mail and have opened it. If you are looking at fifty percent, this is already a good number. You can then subscribe to a higher number of contacts in the mailing list.