gmail has long been a trusted host for personal communication, but google offers more detailed and versatile apps like google drive, classroom, and docs, so people are looking for ways to connect with more people than ever before. With these new ways to share, create, and work, Google has made it easy for people to take their programs a step further and use their platform for business use as well.
As many businesses find themselves working remotely these days, reaching customers and target markets virtually is quickly becoming a top priority. Some businesses may struggle to establish an online presence, stuck trying to figure out how they are going to get their messages and updates about their business out to the public.
Email blasting is a great way to reach a large audience or target demographic, while also getting leads on a larger scale than smaller marketing efforts. Previously, this method has been criticized for being labeled as spam or spam, as it was previously unsolicited email.
This type of communication was reviewed in 2014 (Government of Canada, 2020) and new rules and regulations were implemented. now, these disclosure forms serve a useful purpose, ensuring that registered members, customers, and other important contacts subscribe to mailing lists to receive the information they have requested.
mass mailing
To send a mass email directly through your gmail account, simply compose a new email and enter your contact addresses. it is important to respect the privacy of your recipients: select the bcc option when entering your contacts; this will hide all recipient email addresses.
you can add recipients from your contact list by clicking “cc” and selecting individual or all emails to insert and clicking “select”. the last step is to enter your subject, message or content and hit send.
*tip: Create your message content before entering recipient addresses. this way you don’t have to worry about accidentally sending the email before you’ve had a chance to complete and review your message and content
limitations for sending mass emails
It is important to understand that sending a mass email through your gmail has some limits. there is a maximum number of email recipients a user can have in a single email, as well as a maximum number of emails a user can send in 24 hours. sending them at 23:50 and again at 00:05 won’t work; the system requires a full 24 hours to pass.
One thing you can do to avoid getting errors when you try to send a bulk email through your gmail is to set your recipients as a google group. this will allow you to create a group and fully customize it, including sending an email to all members of your group using one email address – the group address. You can also manage the roles of contacts in your group, allowing others to send email and update group information.
Setting up your group can be tedious as you’ll have to start by manually adding your contacts in groups of ten, but once set up it’s worth it for the ease of future senders. google groups have a free option that is offered to all users but they also have a paid option for business users called google groups for business that is offered through g suite which requires a g suite license to receive the features and benefits of business groups.
increased mass mail production
another option to increase the mass sending of emails through gmail is to use a google chrome extension. gmass addon extension offers a simple solution that you can send your mass emails through your gmail account with multiple customization options; allowing you to mail merge with google sheets, create custom email lists based on data from your gmail messages, customize campaigns like replies, and many other beneficial features for business use.
gmass not only allows you to send personalized mass emails, but you can also send individual messages to each recipient using the “to” field. gmass also allows you to track your open and click rates and receive behavior-based campaign-level reports.
You can download the extension via the google chrome web store and simply use the gmass submit button. it’s important to note that gmass still follows gmail’s total message restriction of 500 recipients per 24 hours.
using a mail merge
Setting up a mail merge is another great way to save time by sending your email to multiple people and personalizing it for each one. Using a mail merge works by extracting data from an imported spreadsheet and using it to fill in specific fields for an email, name, and address.
To use a mail merge with your Gmail account, you’ll need the Mail Merge Plugin for Gmail Extension found on the G Suite Market, a web application source created by Google for its business users.
Aimed at small business owners, Mail Merge for Gmail offers a wide variety of useful features, such as one-click import of Google Contacts to send personalized emails, the ability to send a test email to verify your mail merge campaign settings before sending the email blast to all recipients and many more options to customize your email marketing campaign.
another great feature is that you can track your email open and click rates through google analytics, giving you a more accurate view of who is actually receiving your messages. mail merge is limited to 50 email recipients per day; however, users who can upgrade to the premium edition will increase the limit to 400 recipients. premium mail merge for work will offer up to 1500 email recipients per day, but this is a paid feature offered through google apps and requires you to have a mail merge license to use the 1500 limit .