Firstly, what is bulk email?

  Bulk email is simply the act of sending a lot of email messages at once. Depending on whether it's spam or targetted email (opt-in email) determines how it's viewed by most email recipients...

  Spam is also known as junk email or UCE (unsolicited commercial email) and is basically any email which you receive in your inbox without requesting it. Usually spam email tries to sell you something, most likely a get rich quick plan! If you never requested the information, then it's spam (the term comes from the famous Monty Python skit 'spam, spam and more spam')! Someone who sends out spam is a 'spammer' and these people are reviled on the Internet. With bandwidth at a premium and people usually paying for their online time (either paying to access the Internet or for phone call time while on the Internet) the recipient actually pays the price for the spam which they receive! In addition, the whole Internet suffers by the usage of bandwidth by spammers sending literally millions of emails a day, crashing servers and generally clogging up the system for the rest of us!

  Targetted email, on the other hand, is a respectable advertising technique whereby you select a list of recipients from a respectable opt-in website. All of the opt-in email lists are generated from subscribers which have actively requested to receive emails about their chosen topics, for instance 'business opportunities'. You can make use of these lists by requesting that your email is sent to them, for which the company will charge your per email address. Please note, this is not the same as purchasing 1 million email addresses for $10 and sending them all your advert by email. The difference is the use of a reputable source which provides subscribers which have *requested* to receive your advert, so-called "opt-in".

  Several of the most well-know companies selling opt-in lists on the Internet are:

  You can expect to pay from 4-5 cents per deliverable email address. Sending email in this way is a great way to test your advert or sales pitch (known as 'ad copy'). Not only will you get better responses than the spammers (who just get flamed and mail-bombed to death), you will also be able to send out three or four different versions of your ad copy and decide which has the greatest pull (ie email to sales conversion). You can then refine the best ad and use it in subsequent promotions.

  Another way to respectfully email to several people at once is to start your own email lists. In addition to starting a newsletter (discussed in another article) you can also keep emails you receive from customers queries or from actual sales and perform 'follow-ups'.

  Say you launch a new product, which you think will be of interest to all your previous customers, you can simply send them an email detailing the new product, how it will benefit them and where they can get it.

  It's also a good idea to offer an additional 'freebie' or 'discount' especially for previous customers. But how do you tactfully email everyone without it seeming like you're spamming them? Most dedicated email software will let you use the "Blind Carbon Copy" (BCC) field to add a list of recipients who all receive a copy of the email without knowing that they were part of a list, but *their* name is not in the "To:" field. This is a big problem because a lot of people recognise any emails that don't have their personal address in the "To" field as spam and delete is without even reading it (using filters). The only software I have found which lets you mail to a list but also personalises every email so that it appears that you are just writing to them is Mailloop.

  Please take note, though, Mailloop is very powerful software. It can do everything you want from an email program, but could also be used to spam. Here at Scamfreezone we recommend its use only for emailing to your clients and customers so that it looks like they are receiving *personal* email, it's much more friendly and professional than using the BCC field. However, we absolutely condemn using the software (or any other) to bulk-email to untargetted lists, you will lose your ISP, webspace and business respect almost instantly.