What is Email marketing (Mass emailing)?
Mass emailing is the practice of sending a large volume of emails to a group of recipients simultaneously. This type of campaign allows businesses to reach a wide audience with targeted or promotional messages, aiming to engage, inform, or persuade recipients to take specific actions. Mass emailing often involves a central platform, like a CRM to manage and automate the process, enabling businesses to communicate with their target audience on a larger scale.
What are the best practices when sending email marketing campaigns?
The average email open rate is just 21.33% across all industries, according to MailChimp. Follow these eight best practices to ensure your mass emails resonate with your target audience—this starts with them reading your message.
1. Let recipients opt-in
Only send bulk emails to leads who have explicitly opted to receive your messages. Building a permission-based email list ensures that recipients are more likely to engage with your content and reduces the risk of them marking it as spam.
2. Segment your audience
Create segmented lists within your CRM based on criteria such as demographics, interests, previous interactions, or buying behavior, according to their stage of the buyer journey. For example, you might use Pipedrive CRM’s built-in lead scoring feature to determine the type of sales communication your audience is ready for. From here, you can target specific segments with tailored messaging designed to nurture their interest and engagement.
3. Personalize your emails
Personalization enhances the connection between your brand and your recipients, improving the chances of conversion. Jacob Smailes, Founder and CEO of Baltic Digital Marketing, explains what happens when email personalization is absent:
“In the past, businesses often approached email with a “spray and pray” mentality, sending out mass emails with the hope that a few people would open and engage with them. This approach was ineffective, as it lacked personalization and relevance, often resulting in low open and click-through rates.”
“People don’t want to feel like they’re part of a mass mailing list. Each email should make the reader feel it’s specifically tailored for them. Small tweaks like using the recipient’s first name and referencing their unique interests can make a huge difference.”
4. Optimize your email design
Your email design must be visually appealing, mobile-friendly, and optimized for different email clients to meet your target audience where they’re at. Use a clean layout, compelling visuals, and concise copy to deliver your message effectively.
5. Create relevant content
Nothing will make a recipient hit the “Spam” button faster than sending email content that doesn’t align with their interests.
“Check your mailing lists before you send them out. My Office Supplies company doesn't need structural engineering services,” advises business owner Susann Akers.
Whether it’s educational information, special offers, or exclusive content, focus on providing value to your subscribers to keep them engaged and interested in your emails. Store preferences, interests, and other key information in your CRM as a best practice.
6. Include a clear and prominent call-to-action (CTA)
Whether it’s to download a report, contact your sales team, or upgrade their subscription, make sure your CTA is compelling and encourages recipients to take the desired action.
7. Test your mass emails
Regularly evaluate different elements of your email campaigns, such as subject lines, CTAs, or content layout, to determine what strikes a chord with your audience.
Use email A/B testing to compare different versions and optimize your emails based on the insights gathered.
8. Analyze email campaign results
Monitor key metrics such as email open rates, click-through rates, email conversion rates, and churn rates in a CRM. This data provides insights into the performance of your campaigns, highlights areas for improvement, and enables you to make data-driven decisions for future optimizations.
How do CRM and mass email marketing fit together?
A customer relationship management (CRM) system like Pipedrive CRM provides a single platform to store customer data, automate mass email campaigns, and track sales performance. It enables businesses to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviors to drive more effective campaigns.
What are the advantages of sending mass emails via a CRM?
A CRM isn’t the only solution available to send email blasts, but it offers distinct advantages over using dedicated email marketing software, including:
Centralized dashboard: Manage and organize your contacts effectively from a CRM, including their email addresses, preferences, and sales funnel stage. This ensures you have the most accurate and current information available when sending mass emails. In Pipedrive CRM, you can display email marketing performance data in a single location, using color coding to highlight when a particular group of leads might be ready to receive sales outreach or a follow-up message.
Lead warming: Your CRM contains lead data cataloging all leads and sales team interactions. This enables you to create an automated drip campaign where you slowly drip-feed your marketing message to your leads over a series of emails and nurture their growing interest in your brand. You’ll design an email sequence to go out at specific intervals, guiding leads through the customer journey and providing relevant content and timely follow-ups to increase the likelihood of converting them into customers.
Segmentation: CRM software like Pipedrive CRM makes it easy to divide your contacts into buckets based on their lead data. For example, you might segment based on company size, niche, or geographic location, and then personalize your content accordingly.
Reporting: A quality CRM provides detailed tracking and analytics capabilities for email campaigns. In Pipedrive CRM, you can monitor open rates, click-through rates, and conversions within the platform.
Ready to send customized emails in a fraction of the time? Sign up for a demo of Pipedrive CRM to start crafting email blasts that resonate with your leads, prospects, and customers.
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