It's one thing to blanket your contacts with email blasts that announce a new product or service or an upcoming promotion. Conventionally speaking, these messages are little more than a billboard ad or a mailer, indiscriminate and designed with the brand in mind rather than the customer. Reply rates, return on investment and other strategic metrics are lost in the ether, along with your message.
Our email blast service package is different: yes, we develop broadcast messaging, but the difference is that we see email blasts as an opportunity for you to make meaningful connections with many prospective customers at once with relevant, compelling content. And our clients see the difference with not just leads, but reportable metrics including strong open and click rates.
The secret to our clients' success is no secret; we're happy to share some of them! Here are some of the elements that go into developing email blasts that get replies (and results!)
6 Email Blast Best Practices
Choose the right offer
Do you have an offer that simply screams opportunity? Say you’ve added a new service to your offerings based on client feedback. Other companies will likely be interested in it, as well.
This is the perfect type of offer that performs with an email blast. It’s short, to the point and something that will interest many people. You can make your prospects a compelling offer such as a flash sale or exclusive offer.
To narrow down your perfect offer, think about what you want to deliver and how you want recipients to react when they open it. Your intention should be to encourage prospects to meet your intended goals: buying something, visiting your new store or talking to a representative about their needs. Like any other marketing tactic, a good email blast starts with clear, identifiable goals.
Target your list
While we have a high-quality email database with over 700 million+ business contacts, your blast will go to just a fraction of that list. This is because you’ll get the best response the more you target your prospects.
The last thing you want is for your emails to go to the wrong people, including those who might be irritated by the email offer — and who might even consider it spam. To get the best bang for your buck — and avoid the spam folder — you want to utilize segmentation. This means companies that either may be interested in your offer right now or may be interested in the immediate future.
Make sure your list is accurate and reputable
The truth is that anyone can compile an email list. Think of all the spam you get in your junk folder every day. Somebody somewhere had to grab your email along with millions of other emails to send you that spammy email.
The fact is that a quality email database is miles apart from those junk email lists that we’re all on. What’s critical is that your list is targeted, as mentioned above, but also that it’s accurate and reputable so you can reach out to the right prospects. Building an email blast list with those qualities takes time and energy. In the end, the payoff will be worth it.
Think campaign strategy
Just because you’re sending a one-time email blast for a special one-time mass email promotion does not mean you can neglect marketing strategy. Realize that every time a prospective customer sees your name and brand adds to their long-term impression of you and your company.
This means that you must put the same amount of care and consideration into your promotional email as you’d put into anything else: your website or respective landing page with a compelling call to action, an ad campaign or video production. An email blast may take a few moments of your prospects’ time, your brand name will live much longer.
Let professional writers write your email content
What your email says and how you say it is critical. Writing emails that get results is both science and art — and it’s one best left in the hands of professionals. Where many companies and even marketers get caught up is in the aesthetics. An email blast doesn’t need to be slickly designed or pretty, but the content needs to be strong and on point. Skilled email writers understand this and utilize phrases that can grab prospects’ attention in the subject line, content to keep their interest and the action-focused triggers to use in the CTA that can get people to engage right now!
When it comes to the words in the email, you definitely don’t want to do it yourself and risk a swing and a miss. And truthfully, why take the risk when a professional writer can give you a strong chance to establish connection with your contacts?
Enhance your LinkedIn profile
This may seem like an odd best practice to include on this list. But we have found that this is a valuable service for all the campaigns we run. Why? Because LinkedIn is the social media platform for business.
If a prospect who doesn’t really know you or your company gets your promotional email offer in their email box, one of the steps they are likely to take is to check you out on LinkedIn. Be sure they are impressed by what they find and feel confident doing business with you.
Our Bottom Line for Sending Email Blasts
Naturally, we follow our own best practices when preparing, sending and managing mass email blasts for our clients. Our Automated Email Blasts package includes everything you’ll need to send effective emails, including target market analysis, a highly targeted and accurate email list of up to 45,000 prospects (higher volume available by request), one professionally written email that includes a link to your landing page, LinkedIn profile enhancement to feature the promotion and sending your email blast.
We are confident this approach—which follows the six best practices above—will help your team get responses that lead to closed sales. Ready to get started?