Blasting off emails to hundreds, if not thousands, of recipients is all part of successful email marketing. By nature, email marketing involves a lot of stats. Aka, the more people you send emails to (assuming they’re the right potential customers), the more success you’ll get. You want to reach your dream customers, so you must know how to create an email blast.
An email blast is just sending the same email to many different recipients. It saves you from emailing everyone individually, which isn’t practical.
To be honest, email blasts are part of email marketing for beginners. It’s as basic as knowing the importance of subject lines or a proper CTA. You need to know how to send mass emails with a single click. And if you’re here and ready to learn, congratulations because understanding email blast strategies will revolutionize your business.
In this guide, we’ll establish a watertight definition of email blasts. We’ll teach you how to create one and the main benefits of this strategy. We’ll also show you how to collect email addresses to begin with; sometimes, it’s best to start at the beginning. Does all sound good? Let’s make a start.
What Is an Email Blast?
An email blast is an email sent to a mass of recipients, not just a single channel of communication. It’s an essential part of email marketing to crack, mostly because it streamlines the marketing process. Instead of sending individual communication, you have one button to click and instant access to email lists of people.
Understanding the question of “What is an email blast?” is a simple thing to wrap your head around.
You can start sending mass emails through specific email marketing software. Many of these software are free, too, so keep an eye out on the market.
An email blast is really effective and definitely something to consider for businesses of all sizes. Because it saves so much time, it reduces the amount of staffing you need to dedicate to email marketing campaigns. It keeps time and financial investments as low as possible, which is a definite plus.
These benefits mean that email blasting is a great strategy for small businesses looking to scale on a budget. It is also great for large businesses that have thousands upon thousands of contacts in their email campaigns.
Speaking of business sizes, let’s look at email lists. When it comes to an email blast campaign, your campaign is only as strong as your number of contacts.
Depending on your email list, you may already have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of consented recipients to contact. If you collect newsletter email subscribers as part of your email marketing strategy, this could be even higher, too.
In essence, the number of people an email blast goes out to depends on you and your business. There’s always potential to grow your contact list and make blast emails more effective.
Bulk email sending is the backbone of email campaigns and a fundamental skill to understand.
3 Steps on How To Create an Email Blast
Creating an email blast involves three simple steps, assuming you’ve already got an email list of contacts. These three steps are downloading email marketing software, writing a killer email, and pressing bulk to send. It really is easier than you think. Learning how to create an email blast isn’t difficult.
One of the biggest email marketing mistakes is not learning how to do an email blast. It’s a great skill under your belt and, honestly, a necessary evil (if you don’t enjoy upskilling).
In this section, we’ll take you from zero to hero in no time. Here’s what you need to know about creating an email blast that transforms your business.
Learning how to make an email blast will take your strategy from basic to pro in the blink of an eye.
1. Download Email Marketing Software
Your first step is to choose fantastic email marketing software. This software will be your secret weapon when launching your new and improved marketing campaign. Email marketing software automates everything, from email templates to bulk sending and email deliverability feedback. All of this is essential if you want to make your email marketing as passive as possible.
Don’t stress finding software, as there are loads of options on the market. Many offer free packages, so you can just check whether the software includes a free bulk-sending tool. Here are just three of our favorites:
- Mailchimp offers a free basic package that lets you try the software without any financial commitment. If you want to upgrade, you can get free trials for the $12 and $20 monthly packages. Mailchimp has a great reputation and is one of the main software providers on the market.
- HubSpot is a CRM-powered email marketing software. Like Mailchimp, you can start for free. Paid packages then rise from around $16 to $700 (for large corporations) on a monthly subscription basis.
- Sender isn’t as well known as the other two, but it is a fantastic option for bulk sending. You can start with a basic package for free, and prices only rise to around $25 for advanced packages. It’s budget-friendly and ticks all the boxes.
2. Writing a Killer Email
Next up, write an absolutely killer email. Whether you are writing a promo or cute, rapport-building update for your email newsletters, make your copy sparkling. This is how you connect with your clients in the best way possible — from your email subject to your CTA.
There’s no point in sending an email that won’t resonate with its recipients. Always invest time in your email copy. This could mean hiring a specialist copywriter for marketing services, purchasing Grammarly to self-edit, or using Canva to self-design. Maybe you’ll even enroll in a short course to upskill yourself.
Whatever it takes, you must ensure that each email “lands” with your recipients. After all, this isn’t just going to one recipient but likely your whole email list. The fact that you are bulk sending to email subscribers makes your content even more important.
Imagine if your content read so badly that it ended up in every person’s spam folder. Of course, this leads us to the final stage in the process.
3. Pressing Bulk Send and Monitoring Results
With your software downloaded and your killer email at the ready, all you do is press bulk send. The official process (and button name) varies per software. However, all you are really doing is making sure it goes off en masse.
Now, you may think that this is the end of the story. Marketing automation secured, button pressed, and emails sent. It isn’t.
Now is the time to monitor results. You should pay attention to opening rates (hint: these reflect on your subject line and sending patterns). You should also measure the actions that people take (which reflect on your CTA strength and content’s “direction”).
Many software monitor results automatically. However, you should also be manual and proactive about this. The more you invest in monitoring your results, the better your long-term results will be. You’ll be able to learn from mistakes, and that’s golden.
We suggest investing the time you saved thanks to bulk sending in email marketing analysis instead. You’ll thank us later.
3 Benefits of Sending Email Blasts
There are so many benefits to email blasts. Seriously, if you aren’t already using them, you are giving yourself tons of unnecessary work. They’re such an integral part of marketing that we’d even rate them as a necessity in email marketing for small businesses.
So, with that in mind, what are the benefits? Why should you bother? In this section, we’ll get frank with why we’re even bothering to give you this information. It really helps to know what you’ll gain, especially in the early stages when you need that extra motivation.
1. You Save Time
Saving time is huge. All business owners know how precious time is, and without enough spare time, business growth grinds to a halt. This is why it’s really important to make tasks as efficient as possible, and that includes email marketing.
Without email blasts, you’d be sending individual emails and copying and pasting content. With a list of ten contacts, that might not seem so bad. But by the time you reach the hundreds, this becomes massively unrealistic.
Email blasting is a game changer that saves time. You can then invest the time gained into something else, like analytics or a completely different form of marketing.
2. You Save Money
On the back of this, you also save money. Why? Because you aren’t paying staff to work those extra hours or are losing money doing it yourself in paid time.
Work smarter, not harder. You might also reduce your spending while you’re at it.
3. It Reduces the Chance of Error
An often overlooked benefit of blast emails is that they reduce the chance of error. When you’re copying and pasting constantly, you will eventually mess up. And factoring in the sheer scale of copying and pasting you’ll be doing, it’s easy to see how you’d fatigue.
With blast emails, all you need to do is check one email. Then, you can concentrate your efforts on proofreading and designing that one email. This hugely reduces the chance of error and helps you polish up a singular piece of marketing content. Good results? Here you come.
How To Collect Email Addresses: 5 Foolproof Ways
Whether you want email marketing for hotelsemail marketing for hotels or retail businesses, there’s one thing in common: You need email addresses. These email addresses don’t just pop up at random. Sadly, there’s no genie in a bottle when it comes to securing marketing contacts. So, how exactly do people collect email addresses for email blast campaigns?
1. Email Newsletters
A really popular method is through email newsletters. This is especially popular in information-heavy industries, where potential clients are also keen to learn. However, there’s no reason this couldn’t work in the hospitality industry either.
You could run newsletters for things like cocktail recipes or specialty dishes.
The whole point of newsletters is that they provide an exciting and mutually beneficial point of regular contact. You get to check in and offer something of interest — a win-win.
In terms of collecting email addresses, newsletters help you barter for that contact information. You get to offer something to entice them in.
2. Captive Portals
Captive portals are our favorite (more on that later). They involve a web page popping up when customers click to join your WiFi. This web page contains a form, and guests have to comply to get full WiFi access. You can request whatever information you need, in this case, an email address.
Captive portals are great if you offer in-person services and guest WiFi.
3. Paying for Email Lists
This is a controversial one. Paying for email lists isn’t considered good practice. In fact, it’s a surefire way to head straight to the spam box if you’re not careful. Even if recipients don’t flag you as spam, there’s no guarantee that you’re paying for legit emails.
As a general rule, avoid this strategy when building an email marketing strategy.
4. Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are always a solid option. These involve creating a membership reward system that incentivizes repeat purchases or services. However, they also give you better leverage when trying to obtain email addresses.
A loyalty program is the way to go if you want to bag customer retention and extra email addresses.
5. Competitions
Competitions are a creative way to snag some extra email addresses if you want a temporary burst in contacts. You just advertise the competition — either in-person, on social media, or your other main marketing strategy. You then ask entrees to become email subscribers so they can stay tuned for updates.
It’s a clever way to boost your number of email contacts and also encourages marketing traction, increasing brand awareness.
Beambox: A Solution for Email Collecting
Collecting emails is pretty simple when you have a captive portal set up. And once you have passive email list growth, earning customers through mass email marketingearning customers through mass email marketing becomes much easier. It creates an effective cycle, with your captive portal feeding the contacts for your email marketing.
Think of it as yin and yang. By investing in both collecting email addresses and your ability to bulk send, you’re creating a more balanced system. You’ll have the email addresses to bulk send in the first place.
Then, your widespread marketing campaign will encourage even more visitors, who — you guessed it — will use your captive portal. This way, your email marketing feeds itself.
You can see why embracing email collecting is an important part of preparing email blasts. And when it comes to planning this step of your journey, you’re in the right place.
At Beambox, this is our specialty. Don’t worry about scrambling for captive portal solutions—we’ve got you. We offer all-in-one WiFi marketing software with a personalizable portal, with which you’ll collect enough emails to skyrocket your business.
Start your Beambox free trial today, and take the next steps after learning how to create an email blast.
Get Started With Free WiFi Marketing
Beambox helps businesses like yours grow with data capture, marketing automation and reputation management.
Sign up for 30 days free