Bulk email marketing or the art of sending bulk emails even if unsolicited is a difficult exercise. This is probably because you are not the only one to send bulk emails but rather you would be in the dubious company of a motley crew of spammers. This does not automatically make you also a spammer but the fact is that the lines of distinction between the two are indeed blurred ' especially from the perspective of a potential customer or recipient of mail. Spammers are a nefarious group of people who can be categorized as something between internet advertisers and hackers. This is because some of the methods that are used by these spammers to acquire email addresses and to send emails is more than just dubious and could be considered an invasion of privacy. Since some spammers even sell CDs of harvested email addresses without the express permission of the owners, this is even equitable to data theft. There are many efforts to rein in these spammers and countries, governments, and ISPs have tried their best to control the rampant spread of spam; however, being a largely nameless, faceless bunch of people, the only way to really stop spammers is more intelligent spam filtering ' which is starting to take some effect if the last figures on spam mail is to be believed. To not be categorized among this group requires some simple measures.
The first thing that you need to do before embarking on a bulk email marketing campaign is to acquire email addresses from ethical means. This means that you must get a customer to opt-in before you can send bulk emails. This can be done by forming some meaningful tie-ups with other online entities that have a massive number of users. You can then just poll the users and ask if they would like to receive updates about your product or service and then you can begin sending bulk emails.
The next thing that you need to do is to ensure that your mails don't end up looking like spam. This can be done by using some interesting designs and perhaps even using some graphical and multimedia elements in the bulk mailer.
The final step is to ensure that you follow the CAN SPAM rules as detailed by the US government. This is especially true if your business caters to an American audience or if you are based out of the US.
Doing these three simple things will go a long way to ensure that your bulk email marketing campaign does not end up being a spam campaign that ends up being a random act of just sending bulk email to all and sundry. However, these rules are not absolute and there can still be an amount of error when you send bulk emails. So be careful.
