Broadcast Emails: What Are They and How to Make Them Work for Your Business

How to Set Up Successful Broadcast Emails

The goal of email broadcasting is to send email messages out as soon as possible to contacts. Want your brand to stay relevant and get news or updates to your contact list to let them know what is going on with your business? We will go over the different types of broadcast emails and how to set up each kind of email. 

Not only are broadcast emails good for business marketing, it is a great way to show how well your product or service is doing. 

Table of Contents

• How to Set Up Successful Broadcast Emails
• Broadcast Email Marketing: Let's Call Up the 4 Main Types
  • Newsletters
  • Updates
  • Collection of Resources
  • Promotions and Sales
• How a Broadcast Email System Can Boost Your Business
• The Difference Between an Autoresponder and Broadcast Email
• How to Create a Great Newsletter
• Email Broadcasting: The Dos and Don'ts
  • Don't:
  • Do:
• Conclusion

Broadcast Email Marketing: Let's Call Up the 4 Main Types

You can make a series of any types of emails to be sent automatically or scheduled at a certain time each week, but we will go over the most common broadcast emails businesses use to boost their site visitor count and sales. And remember that the creation of any of these types of emails do not call for advanced experience in email marketing. You only need the right resources and knowledge of what your business's message should be.

Newsletters

You've received newsletter in your mail inbox before, so you probably have a good idea of what it looks like. Businesses of all kinds send newsletters to update their contacts about successes their companies have had or what partners they have joined forces with. This is what makes it a broadcast email. The emails are being broadcast to the business's general email segment.

You can bet on a few things with these newsletters (or 'broadcast email'), though. It is very clear to the audience and the sender that these are part of a special subscription list separate from regular subscription lists, such as a list contacts sign up for to receive special deals or birthday surprises each year. No matter what, there are one of a few different types of call-to-action buttons one can provide at the beginning, middle, or end of the newsletter: a link to redirect to a particular product page, a link to a form to sign up for a different list, or a link to a form to book an appointment (if applicable).

Don't be surprised if you see simple buttons asking you to follow the business on a social channel or two. In fact, feel free to do the same in your business's newsletter! Generally, these buttons are placed at the end of the email message.

Updates

Updates are useful emails when a customer has bought a software as a service because updates are happening all the time as technology improves. What is usually included in these emails? These are not scheduled emails, so the updates are specific and list what has changed or improved. Sometimes, a video is included to act as a tutorial. More times than not this type of broadcast wants the contact to be happy with their product or service, so one could include a bonus item or discount for any add-ons that were created in the update.

Collection of Resources

A collection of resources (or a digest) is just that - a collection. It is short, easy to read, and generally has links to a newsletter portion, product or news updates, etc. You can actually put anything in these broadcast emails. Though it seems like an email marketing cop-out, it's not. Because it's easy to read, more people are okay with opening it and will likely click a link. It's similar to a newsletter but the content structure is different.

Promotions and Sales

You can quickly acquire new customers and get new leads with this type of broadcast email marketing, which is designed to sent at the beginning of your business opening. Make sure to press the urgency of the sale in these emails. Your product or service will only have a great deal for a short time, right? Don't forget to also add your product and brand image, cost or coupon, and express the impact the product or service will have on the customer in the long run. 

How a Broadcast Email System Can Boost Your Business

Now that we've talked about the different types of emails you can broadcast, let us state the obvious. You can send any types of emails that have a call-to-action button or link to a page you want your audience to go to. Generally, this can be a landing page or product page. 

If you give your contacts or audience great value, you are certain to boost your sales tenfold by using these email marketing tips. Giving a lead or customer value does not always mean you have to send them a text with a coupon code to your online store. You can give them a valuable document that will help them understand their product better. Perhaps you have an e-book or new website that is easier to manage for current users. 

You'll soon see that with the broadcast emails you've sent, your newsletters and updates will convert leads faster. This type of broadcast email marketing campaign is what most customers are used to, so they also will not likely unsubscribe. Especially if they were recently added to the list.

Pro tip: studies show that Tuesdays are the best days for sending out broadcast emails for those who want more opens and less hard or soft-bounces.

The Difference Between an Autoresponder and Broadcast Email

An autoresponder campaign is a series of emails (or one email at a time) that automatically send to certain contacts in particular groups that you define or segment based on triggers. The triggers will tell your email messaging system to send a certain email, like a "Welcome" email to the customer who just bought a product or signed up to receive your campaign.

These triggers are based on certain rules. For example, a new lead could fill out a form and choose an option to "receive newsletter emails only" in the form. This will trigger only the newsletter emails to send to that contact from then on.

If you sent a broadcast email, it could be a newsletter as well, but it would not be sent to just one person in particular based on triggers. Broadcast emailing is meant to target a larger group of people at a time. This is why segmenting your contacts is extremely important. You wouldn't want a lead to get an update on a program or software they didn't buy, right? 

You may also read elsewhere that an email that is defined as broadcast is only a standard message. The message could be standard, but that doesn't mean it cannot be personalized. An email broadcast campaign is actually quite personable if sent to the correct target audience.

How to Create a Great Newsletter

Let us help you get started with the most common of email type: newsletters. We suggest, first of all, using solid email messaging software like TruVISIBILITY's Messaging app to help with any email automation you may need for contacts who respond to a form and become subscribers to a particular type of email lists. A few other things you should look for in a software for broadcast email building include:

• Personalization. Subscribers love an email that is personalized to them. This could mean adding a simple first name to the beginning of each email.
• Stats. Analytics of how well your emails are doing is important. Bounce rates and other data should be able to be found for each autoresponder or broadcast email you send.

Email Broadcast Sending: The Dos and Don'ts

Ultimately, the goal of a business for sending broadcast emails is more than gaining a click or for someone to make a service appointment. The goal is for higher sales for your business, right? This can take time with broadcast emailing, but the time it takes to send an email and the time it takes for a customer to be part of your sales can be smaller if you follow a few simple rules.

Don't: 

• Treat these emails as if they are regular mail that go to a person's box whenever you want. There should be a reason, like a product update or regular newsletter with updates and useful information (value) for the customer.
• Send an email to a generic audience consistently. Most of the time you want to personalize your messages.

Do:

• As mentioned before, personalize your messages every once in a while. Yes, you can automate a contact's first name even in an email broadcast. Also, you do not need to have every email you're sending say "Hi, Olivia" or "We have news for you, Steven". Test out which email marketing strategy works best for your business.
• We've just lightly covered A/B testing. This is what you should do at first with almost everything from the messaging in the emails and what you broadcast content-wise to the layout and subject line of your emails.

Conclusion

Now we leave it up to you to choose the best email marketing strategy for these types of emails. Do you want to be sending updates every week to your contacts? They may think your product isn't ready with all of those updates. Do you need to include new products in every newsletter? 

By doing some testing and strengthening your company's voice, it will be only a matter of time before you know exactly how you want your newsletters to look and what your target audience will click on. Now we leave it up to you to choose the best email marketing service for your campaign strategy. Whether your emails will be automated or not, try us out for free and get all of the tools you need for a series of broadcast emails.