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    Email Blast vs Email Campaigns – Which Is the Most Effective Strategy?

    Written By Jason Rowse - Digital Marketing Expert

    Updated: 09/06/2021

    It is fair to say that many businesses and sectors now recognize email marketing to be a highly effective tool for reaching out to new and existing customers.

    However, many who are new to the issue may not realize that there are several different approaches you can take on it.

    These might be dependent on what is the norm within your sector or simply what you are looking to achieve from your latest efforts. However, two of the most well-known strategies available to businesses are email blasts and email campaigns.

    As the name suggests, email blasts involve pushing a generic communication out to a very wide audience, while campaigns tend to be a more focused and considered effort to boost both sales and general customer engagement. Here, we are going to compare the two across a range of key areas and examine the pros and cons that they offer

    1. Reaching Far and Wide

    If you have spent time carefully designing and developing an email marketing message, it is only natural that you would want as many people as possible to see it. Email blasts could be useful for this, as they allow you to push a single message out to a huge number of people at once. That means the potential reach of that one email could be massive.

    In contrast, email campaigns may be focused on reaching specific individuals within your customer base. With this in mind, they may simply not offer up the big numbers that you could expect with a powerful blast.

    2. Finding Your Target Audience

    However, it could be argued that firing a mass email once or twice to a massive audience may not prove as effective as a more tailored approach with a focus on a specific audience. Email campaigns created through quality email marketing software services will allow you to use segmentation to generate different messages for different people.

    The communications could then be altered based on a range of factors, including:

    • The location of the recipient
    • Their nearest office or store
    • Gender
    • Age
    • Interests
    • Purchasing history

    On a similar note to the final bullet-point, if you are a retailer, you could even take the step of offering reminders related to abandoned shopping carts. If people went through the purchase process just to stop short at the very last minute, a little message to flag it up to them could be useful if you want to push through that sale.

    By making use of all of the benefits of segmentation, you are reaching an interested audience with content that suits their needs and this could be far more beneficial than purely sending a single, generic message.

    3. Winning New Business

    An email campaign may be based on a mailing list you have created from information linked to existing customers, so while that is good for reaching those with an interest in your services it may not mean you acquire many new customers.

    An email blast could, therefore, be handy with that in mind, as there may be occasions when people who did not know about your brand spot your message and decide to seek out more information. They then may ultimately become a new customer and that could mean you then look upon your blast as a major success.

    4. Generating valuable data

    In contrast, though, an email marketing campaign may mean you have access to far more useful information and data than is possible through sending out a single generic message to a large audience.

    A well-crafted campaign created and designed through an excellent email marketing software service will allow you to access a host of useful analytic information and data.

    This will include vital metrics such as:

    With this detail, you will be able to see what works for a specific audience and what does not.

    The benefit?

    That you could learn lessons from the information and go on to refine the quality and effectiveness of the campaigns that you go on to build in the future.

    In comparison, a mass email once or twice might provide some minimal feedback, but the sample would simply be too wide and varied for you to get a clearer picture of how to move forward when it comes to specific individuals.

    5. Getting Messages Read

    On a similar note, a fundamental aim of your email marketing is that you want your messages to be seen and read. There are no guarantees that will always be possible, though, so how can you go about improving your chances? Easy. By essentially giving people what they want.

    With that in mind, you can use all of the data you have to create a properly-tailored email marketing campaign that feels personal and relevant to the recipients.

    By doing that, you are surely increasing the chances that existing and prospective customers will engage with your communications and even go on to use your services.

    In fact, research by Experian back in 2014 found that personalized messages generate six times higher transaction rates.

    Unfortunately, the same simply cannot be said of email blasts. Sending out unsolicited messages with no aim or focus may just mean that they end up being completely ignored by the recipients.

    Worse still, they could even end up in that most dreaded of places – the spam folder – and that could seriously threaten the success of future messages.

    6. Building Effective Content

    One way to avoid messages ending up being marked as spam is by offering genuinely interesting and effective content. Again, this is something that can be made possible through the use of email campaigns.

    For example, across a number of campaigns you could use data to assess how a range of different elements within your messages work, including:

    • The general layout
    • Imagery
    • Links

    Furthermore, if you know who you are actually sending your messages to you could add personal touches which might just help to bring your emails to life for some individuals.

    For example, you could take the simple step of saying ‘hi’ to the recipient by name at the top of your message. In addition, an email with a special offer sent around the time of their birthday may not only be hugely appreciated but could also be effective in securing sales.

    >>Check out email blast examples

    Again, such a step is simply not possible when you choose to go down the route of sending a mass email once or twice. If you are sending a generic message to a wide audience, you cannot develop that personal touch or ultimately know if you are sending them information of detail that they actually want to see.

    7. Creating Customer Connections

    As you may have noticed by now, so many of the benefits of well-constructed email marketing campaigns relate to the ability to send people timely content that is of genuine interest to them.

    The importance of being able to do this should not be downplayed, as it gives customers a sense that you understand them and are an organization that can cater to their needs.

    Not only that, but the right kind of campaign could form the basis of a deep and long-lasting connection with specific customers, which in turn sees them come back to you time and time again.

    It almost goes without saying that this is not the case when sending a mass email once or twice. By taking that approach, it could be argued that your messages remain impersonal and may even lack the personality that keeps customers coming back for more.

    This may then hold you back from developing the vital bonds that can make a major difference as you look to grow and develop your business.

    The Bottom Line

    So, although some email marketing beginners may not realize it, there are significant differences in how you can make use of the format to reach out to the wider world.

    There may well be a time when email blasts could be an effective and exciting option, but the benefits of a carefully thought-out and well-built campaign should not be downplayed. The latter could prove vital as you look to take your business to new heights in the months and years ahead.