Why Email Blasts Are a Bad Idea.

First let’s define an ‘email blast’.

Here’s my definition:  “Its a marketing email sent all at once to a large quantity of recipients whom have not given the sender of the blast permission to contact them.”  I might also add, “This is commonly considered spam by most of the recipients.”

Lets take a look at a scenario.  You want to market something.  You buy, or rent a list of emails addresses from a list broker.  You find a rare email service provider that will let you use rented lists.  You blast out 10,000 emails to everyone on the list. 

What will likely happen is that you won’t sell anything.  Your email gets marked as junk or spam by most of the recipients.  The sending email address and server gets blacklisted.  You have damaged your business reputation, and created bad will.

Here’s why.

You won’t sell anything.
Some questions to consider.  How targeted was your list?  Was everyone on the list needing or wanting your product?  How did they get on the list?  How long ago did they get on the list?  Are they even still using that particular email address? 

All these things you don’t really know.  Is this the recipe for an effective marketing campaign?  I don’t think so.


Email marked as junk and/or spam.
As these people did not ask to receive your emails, or give you permission to send them emails, why would they not consider your email as spam?  Do they know you?  Ever receive an email from you before?  Have any contact with you before?  You’re practically demanding that they consider your email as spam.

Email software providers
A vast majority of web based email service providers do not allow you to send emails to address purchased or rented from a list broker.  For the reason why, see below.

Your mail server gets blacklisted
Emails get sent from a mail server.  If your recipients start designating your emails as junk, or reporting them as spam, their email providers like Hotmail, or Yahoo, or Gmail will notice.  And they will ban all further emails from your mail server to any of their email customers anywhere.  Your server will be blacklisted, and your ability to do any kind of email marketing will be terminated.

Damaged Reputation
You don’t have your recipients permission to send them emails, yet you do anyway.  How do you think that will make them feel about your business?  People know that there are laws concerning spam.  They probably don’t know the law precisely, but will still wonder if what you are doing is legal.  Do you really want potential customers wondering that? 

Perception is everything.  You should be trying to build goodwill, not bad will.