At Campaignmaster we are repeatedly amazed at professional companies who send marketing messages via Outlook.

We often hear the reasons for doing this as being “it’s free”, “emails get through” or “it does the job”. This may be right to an extent, but you could be doing a lot more damage than you know if you send out mass marketing messages through Outlook. To help clear things up for you, we have put together the reasons why you should stop sending marketing emails through Outlook and use the right tool for the job.

Personalisation

When sending a marketing campaign to a bunch of people, it is common to address the recipient by their name, however this is not possible when sending mass emails through Outlook. Sound ESP’s (Email Service Providers) such as Campaignmaster will allow unlimited personalisation, where you can easily insert the recipients name and not just “Hello [first name]”. You can personalise any element of the email you wish from the sending details, to the body content and even change imagery depending on the recipient’s preferences.

Dedicated Sending IPs

Your internal email system and even your website will be using a dedicated IP and domain. Would you want to risk that IP’s reputation and domain by sending mass marketing emails? At Campaignmaster, we provide dedicated sending IPs, which separate your marketing messages from your website and internal emails boosting your deliverability. So, don’t upset your IT department and keep them happy knowing that marketing are not reliant on them to provide extra bandwidth, manage any complaints or blacklisting of your website or internal emails – leave this to us.

Blacklists

Did you know that there are over 300 publicly available blacklists? To avoid ending up on any blacklist, we closely monitor each and every client’s sending domain and dedicated IP address.  Using a dedicated sub-domain solely for email marketing purposes means a blacklist wont impact your top-level website domain.

Now, you may be thinking, why does blacklisting happen? There are numerous reasons, including end-user complaints, so with so many backlists out there, is it worth risking your business-critical emails? We think not!

Attachments

The bigger your attachment, the higher the chance of that email getting blocked in Outlook, because attachments add weight to an email and some email content filters may have a maximum weight allowed to be received in delivered emails. In Campaignmaster you can upload files of various formats and link to them directly from your email, reducing its size and minimising the risk of it being blocked by Outlook. Furthermore, you can track who actually looks at the attachment.

Bounces

Bounces. No one likes them. They are a result of your email not being delivered to its intended destination. They can be classified as either hard or soft bounces and you can find out more about them here. Using Outlook won’t help you find or solve any bounce related issues whereas any reputable ESP can manage your bounces and as a bonus Campaignmaster will also let you know what the reason was for non-delivery too.

Opt-Outs

So, if people want to be removed from your mailing list, how would you manage this? The process of managing opt-outs should be as straight forward as possible i.e. not having to reply to multiple emails. With a powerful ESP you can easily manage your opt-outs, (and instantly too), ensuring you don’t spam anyone keeping your mail list happy and complaint-free.

Authentications

There is so much more to sending email marketing campaigns than just picking a ‘from’ address. The from address contains your sending domain, which should have a dedicated IP address – you get this automatically with Campaignmaster. Having a separate IP address for your marketing messages ensures your day to day emails and website domain remains safe from numerous complaints about your marketing emails.

You will also need several authentications or digital signatures to aid in deliverability including an SPF record (this tells the receiving server that the email is coming from the stated sender and not someone pretending to be you), DKIM and DMARC authentications. None of these will be available if you are sending mass mail from Outlook.

Spam Analysis

There is no way of predicting how inboxes will react to emails sent through Outloook, as you can’t run a spam analysis. For all you know, your emails could be ending up in junk folders, majorly affecting your reputation. Campaignmaster’s spam analysis tools gives you feedback for any spam points accrued to avoid hitting the junk folder.

Mobile Optimised Emails

Reports tell us that around 68% of all emails opened in the UK are on a mobile device, so ensuring your emails are mobile optimised is a must! With Campaignmaster you can test your optimisation across various devices before you send it using our advanced rendering tools ensuring that your content is displayed right regardless of screen size.

Email Analytics

That email you’ve been working so hard on has gone out! Now what? Wouldn’t you want to know how your email was received, who opened it, who clicked on what link? You need to get those all-important statistics so you can send future emails more effectively and target your campaigns. With Campaignmaster’s detailed tracking and reporting, you will know within seconds how well your emails is doing.

Scheduled Sends

Don’t worry if you aren’t in the office when the email needs to go out. Schedule your campaign with specific time and date parameters, so even if you’re running late, you can make sure your email campaign isn’t.

Out of Office Replies

Who likes an inbox full of out of office messages – not us!  With Campaignmaster you can direct these to an inbox of your choice and in your Outlook account just set up a rule to direct further to a specific folder. Nice and neatly all managed for you.