How do I Choose the Best Bulk Email Service?

Advertising via email is a viable way to earn sales from new customers, as well as to upsell new products and services to existing customers. When you don’t have the time to manage this type of advertising in-house, then the wise move is to contract with a bulk email service to handle this portion of your marketing efforts. Before you make a commitment to any one service, it is important to look closely at what the service will and will not do for you.

One of the first points to consider with any bulk email service is their ability to provide you with targeted email addresses of people who are highly likely to open and read those emails. All too often, services of this type entice customers with the promise of sending their advertising to a huge volume of email addresses, but fail to mention that the list itself is old. That is list probably contains email addresses that are no longer valid, or is not exclusively made up of people who are likely to be interested in receiving email solicitations about the products you offer.

Never work with a bulk email service that does not offer a targeted list to augment your own qualified opt-in list, and under no circumstances waste your time on any service that offers to sell you their list outright. You can be sure that the same list has been sold to a number of other clients over the years, a factor that significantly decreases the chances of a healthy conversion rate. Reputable bulk email services are constantly updating their lists, keeping them fresh and viable, and manage those lists for their customers. If you are offered a list on a CDR, there is a good chance it has not been updated in quite some time, and will not be worth the purchase price.

As with many types of business services, you get what you pay for when it comes to a bulk email service. Pricing that seems too good to be true is probably exactly that. Services that effectively manage lists and take your business needs seriously put a lot of time and effort into making sure your email solicitations are only sent to email leads where there is a viable chance of the contact resulting in a sale. This expertise will cost a little more, but the return is likely to be much higher.

Finally, make sure you deal with a bulk email service that knows how to structure the body of the email so that it is attractive to the recipients. Depending on the market or markets where you seek customers, this may mean designing an email that will look good even if the recipient chooses to block pictures and other accents of the email itself. Savvy bulk email services know how to do this, and will proactively discuss the matter with you before taking on the job. If a service seems somewhat apathetic about how your email will look, that is a sign you should take your business elsewhere.