When you own a company, you need to do what you think is best for your brand, and in many cases, this could come in the form of different types of email marketing. Creating the perfect email is an art, but sometimes the only viable option is to make some noise.
What is an Email Blast?
Email blasts are not always the most ideal marketing practice, but they can sometimes be necessary for various reasons. It’s important for business owners and marketers to have the ability to convey the message that they want through email blasts without appearing spammy. Also known as e-blasts, email broadcasts, and bulk emails, email blasts are mass messages that are sent or ‘blasted’ out to your entire mailing list. These emails tend to have a more generalized message and tone since they are being sent to a large audience, with a broader reach in comparison to personalised and segmented email campaigns.
Different Types of Email Blasts
An email blast is a blanket message to the entire audience. However, you may often need to segment your email list or customers before you send an email blast. Some of the different types of e-blasts include:
Sales Offers
One example would be a general email that is sent to your subscribers to inform them of a sale or special offer. Before you send this kind of email blast, it’s a good idea to segment your customers according to various demographics such as their gender, occupation, or location.
Service or Product Launch
One of the most common uses for an email blast is to inform subscribers about the launch of a new product or service. The purpose of the email blast is to announce the new service or product that you are offering to a relevant audience.
Reminders or Alerts
You can use an email blast to send out an impactful last-call message to your subscribers to remind them of a service or offer that is about to expire. The email blast can be used to alert your subscribers to make a purchase now with a last chance email. To get the maximum benefit and the best response from your subscribers, it’s worth segmenting your list to ensure it is sent out to the right people.
First Looks
If you have a new or modified product or service that is soon to be released, an email blast can be an ideal way to evoke more curiosity in your subscribers. They can be an ideal way to get your subscribers more curious about something new that is coming their way.
How to Set Up an Email Blast Campaign
When marketing your products or services, chances are that you’re going to need to use an email blast sooner rather than later. To create an email blast campaign, do the following:
Identify Your Purpose
It is important to have a clear purpose for creating your email blast before creating one. Consider the message that you want to put across that may not be achievable with a segmented campaign. This could be to alert customers to a new service or product launch, a sales offer, alert, or reminder, or to spark curiosity in something new. The design and content of your email will be outlined by the purpose of your broadcast email. You should always put the same level of planning and effort as you would put into a targeted email campaign despite the nature of your blast campaign.
Making a Good First Impression
Like any tailored email, it’s just as important to put effort into creating a good first impression with your email blast campaign. Your subject and headline are two areas to pay special attention to since these will make a lasting impression on your recipient and will often be used to determine whether or not the email is opened. Be sure to avoid any common, vague, or click-bait lines in your subject line. When it comes to the headline, or the first three lines of your email, it’s important to be aware that this will define the tone and mood of the message. Before hitting send, you should make sure that it is intriguing, lasting, and powerful.
Create an Email Blast List
You can get more control over the content and message that you want to convey by segmenting your email list based on customer types. While blast emails are general rather than very targeted or specific, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t segment your email list. It’s a good idea to create email lists based on demographic segments. This is important as not every email blast that you send is going to concern your entire audience, and it can also help you bring a more personalized feel to the general messages that you send.
Craft the Perfect Content
By their nature, email blasts tend to be more non-specific and free-spirited. However, this doesn’t mean that they need to be boring. Just like you would with any other kind of email marketing campaign, it’s a good idea to put lots of effort into crafting the perfect content and choosing the right tone, theme, colors, pictures, fonts, and text to make sure that you put the right message across. When creating content for your email blast message, it should always be crisp, exciting, and thought-provoking.
Measure Your Results
Finally, you should determine a way to measure your results from an email blast. You should see results through purchases, website or online store views, customer queries, and customer feedback. Measuring all of these will help you get a better idea of how eventful and interactive your email blast has been. You should conduct an analysis of your bounce rate, open rate, and click-through rate to determine what needs to change and make changes accordingly. If your blast email has not performed as well as you thought it would, you may need to make some changes to variables such as subject lines, calls to action, messaging, visual imagery, and the overall tone of the email.
Are Email Blasts Effective?
If you need to create an email blast, there is more to it than you might think. Whether or not your email blast is effective will depend on the purpose of sending an email blast and who you are sending it to. For example, email blasts to send a reminder of a sale that is soon to end might be more effective as your subscribers get FOMO and rush to buy before they lose the opportunity to save money. On the other hand, email blasts that offer a first look at a new product or service coming out soon might be less effective since customers will have forgotten about it once the product or service is actually released. Some tips to keep in mind if you want to make your email blast campaign more effective include:
Write the Subject Line First
When it comes to running a successful email blast campaign, your subject lines are going to be of great significance. This is because if your subject line doesn’t encourage your reader to take action and open the email, none of the email content is going to matter at all. It’s important to take some time to come up with good subject lines for your blast emails. The best subject lines are short, to the point, and give the reader an idea of what to expect when they open the email.
Use a Responsive Design
Bear in mind that most people are likely going to be opening your blast email messages on a smartphone app. So, it’s important to use a responsive design that is going to look great and be interactive on any device. If your blast email is only designed for personal computers, this could cause it to be impossible to read or learn anything from on a mobile app, which in turn could mean that your emails get opened, but that’s where it ends.
Regular Testing
Mistakes happen, but in email marketing of any kind, they can have serious consequences. While other forms of digital marketing like social media posts or blog articles can be edited and fixed if you make a mistake, once you send an email it can’t be taken back. If there’s a broken link or typo in an email that you’ve just sent to thousands of people, it’s not going to look good for your brand and there’s nothing that you can do about it. Thankfully, regular testing to make sure that the emails are completely free from any errors and mistakes before you hit the send button is made easy with most email marketing services.
Segment Your Lists
While a blast email is more general, there’s still plenty of reasons to segment the lists. For example, you can create an engaged segment for those who have opened and engaged with your emails before and send the majority of blast emails to that segment.
While blast emails shouldn’t be your main way of marketing via email, they can be a useful way to make an announcement or send a reminder to your subscribers.
