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Bulk email marketing is essential to any home business because it is well known in internet marketing that one email to one or two prospects achieves nothing. A prospect must be exposed an average of seven or eight times to a product before they will purchase.

Just imagine how long it would take you to email even just a dozen prospects every two or three days using manually written emails to each of them. How effective do you think that be? Just a dozen prospects? Your business would be dead in the water before it even made a splash. So how, I can hear you wondering, do you get a bulk email marketing strategy started?

First of all you need a list of email addresses. As already stated, a dozen email addresses is not much use to you. To be effective, a bulk emailing must be targeted at several hundred addresses belonging to prospects that have expressed an interest in your product. In other words, they are focused on your product, service or niche. You will then have a improved chance of your email being opened, and then read. That is your main initial objective: to get your email opened.

Once it has been opened, it has to be read, and then the reader must make the response that you want. That response could be click to your sales page, filling in form in the email, or even placing an order directly from the email. In order to get as far as that there are a number of steps that have to be taken, so let's have a look at those necessary, from the beginning to the end of an effective bulk email marketing campaign.

First the list. For this you need list-building software. The main feature of that will be an opt-in form that potential prospects will fill in with at least their first name and email address, plus any other information that feel necessary such as URL, family name, telephone number, etc. Generally, however, all you need acquire at this stage is the first name and email address. The software should generate this form and provide you with the HTML for you to add to a page on your website. If you have no website, then get one, since you cannot run an email campaign without one.

The software should operate as an autoresponder. That is, that once a prospect gives you their details, and joins your list, a thank you email should be sent to them. The software will do that since it would be impossible for you to. Once you have a decent sized list of several thousand there is no possibility of you handling any bulk communications manually. You will require a good software package to achieve that.

You must also use what is known as a 'double opt-in'. That is where, after sending the completed form, the prospect is sent a return email informing them that there is an email in their Inbox containing a link that has to be clicked to confirm the subscription. This again is done by your software.

The software should also place the name and address into a database, along with the rest of your list. Over time, your list will grow, assuming that provide a good reason for people to give you their valuable details. That, however, is a different topic. Right now we are looking at the mechanics of a bulk emailing strategy, and are now assuming that you have built up a reasonable sized list of, say, ten thousand. A good list is over a hundred thousand, and some even number in the millions.

Your list, however, will be targeted to your website, and even a thousand such contacts are worth a list of a hundred thousand that you have purchased and that have no specific interest in your products. You now require software that can send an email to every one of them at specific pre-programmed dates if necessary, and send that in both text and HTML format. Some people prefer HTML while others text, and it is essential that you cater for both.

You also have to maintain your list, and remove those that want to unsubscribe. This is an essential requirement if you are to avoid spamming. Each of your emails should offer an unsubscribe option, and your software should automatically remove any person who clicks on that link from the database.

Good email software will also provide you with statistics such as how many of your emails were opened, and how long they were opened for. From that you can tell the effectiveness of your email subject line, or the email itself. It should also point out the undeliverable emails and remove these from your list.

Although bulk email marketing is essential to any home business, it requires a good software suite to enable it to be carried out effectively. You cannot operate such a campaign manually, and are totally reliant on the software that you use. Choose wisely since it could make you or break you.