Bulk emails are emails that are sent out in large numbers at once.
They often take the form of newsletters, announcements, or promotional emails. With these emails, you can use dynamic content to personalize your greeting, but every subscriber on your list will receive the same email.
While you can and should send mass emails to different customer segments, they are still much less personalized than other types of emails.
But sometimes it's appropriate. Think about email marketing on special days like Black Friday.
Sending Bulk Emails
As a marketer, you have two options for sending bulk emails: email service providers and bulk SMTP servers.
As a primer, if you don't know what an SMTP server is, it's probably not a good idea to go that route.
An email service provider (ESP) provides you with the tools and platform to create and send emails.
A good ESP has the infrastructure in place to support marketers from email creation to conversion and analytics. They are excellent for marketers of all backgrounds and skill levels.
They also have easy-to-use tools and features, so it only takes a few minutes to create a memorable email.
Conversely, bulk SMTP servers offer fewer features but put more control in the hands of engineers (yes, we say engineers because this is a very complex system).
This option is essentially an ESP stripped of its core functionality. You'll need to configure the system to design your own emails and send campaigns, and these services don't offer support.
You have a lot of flexibility because you can send any message you want at any time without the restrictions that an ESP can impose.
On the other hand, you need to be very confident in your ability to manage and configure your server, and if you operate outside of the email best practices that your ESP adheres to, you won't see the results of your huge time investment.
You should never use a regular SMTP server (e.g. Gmail, Naver, Daum) to send mass marketing emails.
They are not designed for it and will almost certainly trigger spam notifications and your ISP (e.g. Gmail, Naver, Daum) may block your service completely.
Vivoldi offers dedicated server hosting for mail servers and builds mail servers directly on these hosting servers.
You don't need to understand the mail server (SMTP) protocol or any other technical stuff at all, you just need to send mail using the mail server we build for you.
As mentioned above, there are many disadvantages to using an email service provider, such as limited mailbox capacity and number of user accounts, and being charged a monthly fee or per email sent.
On the plus side, however, you only have to spend the money and enjoy the convenience of the service.
On the other hand, a mailing server (SMTP) requires specialized knowledge and requires an engineer to manage it. But you don't have to worry about that.
Vivoldi builds the SMTP server for you, and in case of failure, you just need to ask Vivoldi to remotely access it and take action. It's a very small cost.
To send emails, you need a sending program like Microsoft Outlook.
There are three main ways to send emails.
First, you can install a mail client program such as Microsoft Outlook on your PC, enter the recipients, and send the mail.
However, you can't send mass mailings (typically 10,000+). This is because you can only send to about 200 people.
Second, you can ask the company that builds your website to create a mailing program and send mail using this web program.
You can use SMTP servers from NAVER, Google, and Daum as an alternative to SMTP servers, but it is difficult to use them for mass mailings.
There are many limitations.
Third, you can send mail from the homepage of the company that provides the email service.
It's convenient, but you have to pay for it, and it can be a good option if you have a small number of recipients, but the more you have, the more expensive it becomes.
Which of the three methods would you choose?
Vivoldi also offers a mailing program that allows you to build your own mail server on your server hosting plan and send an unlimited number of emails using your mail server.
The sending program includes statistics on whether your recipients read your emails and, if so, whether they clicked on the links in your emails.
The mailing program is available in Vivoldi's unified dashboard and has a monthly cost.
Bulk email is generally not recommended as a core strategy for marketing campaigns because it can alienate users and cause you to lose subscribers and revenue.
It also puts your reputation as a marketer and your relationship with your ISP at risk.
The best marketing campaigns leverage a variety of features like personalization, segmentation, and analytics to create relevant, high-converting emails.
You'll need to do some research on the latest strategies and tools that modern marketing can leverage in the age of high-value content and personalization.
Click here for a tour of Vivoldi's mailserver build and benefits.
