The Email Blast – Good, Bad or Ugly?

There is widely touted and available emailing software that can send out millions of emails in one vast ‘blast’. EBooks and articles and courses are being offered by ‘gurus’ who promise that you can gain millions of visitors from email marketing. In fact, over the past three months, there was an explosion of such behaviour as  people became convinced that bulk emailing was a holiday best selling strategy.

Hold your horses. An email ‘blast’ is really not a healthy thing for your website. It will not only affect your server reputation, it could label you as a spammer.  This can adversely affect your overall website health.

Now, we know it may be highly tempting to engage in such practices to drive quick traffic to your website. This method is promoted and marketed under a number of terms including ’email marketing’, ’email blasts’ or ‘bulk emailing’. and many believe it is a legitimate marketing campaign you can use to contact people through emails telling them about your products and services. Irrespective of how it presented, it can and will damage your online reputation.

Bottom line: no one likes to get unsolicited mails in their inbox — especially when they are using internet connection that has volume based tariff. Every email you send to them is costing them money, and they will quickly become irritated and shut you down – or worse, report you for spam.  This means that the effect your emails have on people will be exactly the opposite effect than you hoped for your target audience.

Instead of introducing your products and services to them on request and building a good rapport, email blasts are impersonal and annoying, and will only make people resent you. It’s not that your services or products are bad – you are just choosing a pushy, annoying way to promote them!  Sending out mass emails is like dropping into their house at dinnertime without an invitation or crashing their office during a meeting without an appointment.

Once your website and your server are flagged by disgruntled recipients for sending spam mails, you will lose your ranking in the search engines – and maybe even end up getting your website banned. Your server may dump you because you have given the entire server a spammy reputation.

Does this mean never to email people about your services and products? No, it means  you should build an opt-in list of people who have provided their contact information and agreed to receive your emails or news letters. As they have opted to receive your emails, they cannot complain about spam mails. Even in these cases, however, there are certain guidelines to be followed to ensure your marketing mails comply with local laws and regulations!  Do your homework, be respectful, and don’t spam – then you can market your services safely through email marketing without getting your site banned or your server blacklisted.