Using mass email campaigns to market a business or product is at an all-time high. Billions of dollars a year are made as a result of bulk marketing; businesses that have not researched how to use a bulk email solution are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to staying competitive.

When some people see a trend that fosters success, a first instinct is to jump right in and ride the bandwagon. Diving right in without a strategy, however, is not the best recipe for bulk email success. Email marketing online is an endeavor that takes a combination of planning, dedication and the right tools.

Finding Recipients for Your Bulk Email Solution 
Before you get started with mass email campaigns, you need to gather a list of email addresses to send your bulk marketing materials to. One route that businesses take is to purchase opt-in lists of email addresses. This certainly helps gather a good number of recipients in a hurry, and the case can be made that it will introduce your company/product/website to a new group of individuals. Yet while these may be compelling arguments for buying a list for your enterprise email marketing campaign, it isn’t always the best solution.

Capturing email addresses on your own is generally a much more proven avenue of success when it comes to your bulk email solution because names that you collect from your website or trade shows are qualified leads. You have made contact with the individuals and they have provided you with their email addresses because they want more information from you. They know upfront that you, or your business, will be sending them emails and that decreases the likelihood that your messages will be filtered to the trash bin unread.

Writing the Best Mail Message 
Another part of your bulk email solution needs to be writing effective email copy. There are many different formulas for writing effective copy. One popular one is AIDA: Attention Interest, Desire, Action. Other copywriters may prefer ACCA: Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction, Action or PPPP: Picture, Promise, Prove, Push. Whatever formula you choose should match your writing style and the image your company wishes to convey.

There are a few things that you can do aside from your copywriting formula to help increase the success of your bulk email solution:

• Personalize messages
• Segment email lists

Both of these strategies help make your messages look less like spam and more like information material to help your customers make informed choices about your products.

The Right Bulk Email Tools 
Finally, you need to select the best tools for your bulk email solution. Simply sending an email to yourself and placing all of the recipients in the BCC section isn’t an effective method of bulk marketingbecause it offers no way of managing your email lists. When choosing a bulk email solution, make sure that it offers features that help you manage your list of contacts effectively by:

• Making it easy to build lists
• Allowing you to customize your fields
• Providing analytical data for your lists
• Providing a mechanism for sending auto-responses and automated messages

Your email marketing solution can produce noticeable results if done right. Give your efforts a fighting chance by taking the time to research the methods and tools you will use to build your business through this proven method.

When deciding to launch mass email campaigns, much of the planning and preparation goes into writing high quality sales copy for the body of the email and collecting qualified email addresses for your bulk email campaign. Of course the time dedicated to these two tasks is often worth the effort because they have a direct impact on the return on investment you receive from email marketing online. The better the copy the more likely your recipients will respond and, of course, if you have pre-qualified these recipients then you can avoid the fear of being listed as a spammer and prepare for a good response to your bulk marketing.

Getting Your Emails Opened 
While allocating much of your bulk email campaign’s time and budget to these two areas may make perfect sense, there is one fundamental flaw in this approach.

You see, if your recipients are not enticed to open the emails you send them, your efforts will see no returns. No bulk email tool or enterprise email marketing software can help you with this. What can help is a well-written subject line that drives the recipient to action.

The best way to get people to open your email is to give them something that shows a result. Look at the title used for this article: “Writing the Best Subject Lines for Your Bulk Email Campaign.” It promises that if you read this, you will be able to create better subject lines. This entices someone to continue reading past the headline. Other examples can be found reading the newspaper. Mimic headlines that grab the reader’s attention and drive him or her to read on. Applying this technique to the subject line of messages sent in your bulk email campaign will help increase the percentage of emails that are actually read by your recipients. Then your sales copy can do its job.

Other tips for writing better headlines include:

• Making headlines believable and relevant
• Referring to previous communications
• Don’t include your sales pitch in your headline – tell, don’t sell
• Focus on the first 40 to 50 characters
• Don’t include common spam words in your subject
• Don’t ever write your subject lines in all caps
• Write your subject line after you have crafted the body of your email message

Test, Test, Test 
Once you are comfortable with your subject lines, it’s time to start testing. Many times a small change in how a subject line is worded effects the open rate of your bulk email campaign. The easiest way to accomplish this is through a process called split testing. Divide the recipient list into two, or more, groups. Using a modified subject line for each you can monitor the open rate for each group to see which subject is more effective. Of course, you will need the right enterprise email marketing software to do this. Make sure that whatever solution you choose provides you with analytics so you can track the performance of your bulk email campaign.