What is a Broadcast Email? Exploring the Benefits, Strategies, and Best Practices

So, you’re running a business and you’re giving it all you got. Still, not everyone who follows you knows about the updates and improvements you keep adding. The good news is that you can reach more people to see your updates without wasting too many resources and you can achieve this by utilizing your email list to the fullest: Send a broadcast email to all your subscribers.

Email broadcast is a mass communication method used to reach a broader audience with a single message. Unlike personalized and targeted messages, broadcast emails take a one-size-fits-all approach. 

To help you send email broadcasts without boring your audience, let’s unpack what a broadcast email is, what types of broadcasts there are, how to send one, and explore interesting broadcast email examples.

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What is a Broadcast Email?

A broadcast email is a one-time message, such as a sale announcement or awareness campaign, that is sent to a large group of recipients. It closely mirrors mass emails but could slightly vary with its goals and email content.

The goal of broadcasts is to reach more people with a single instant message. Commonly, these emails are not targeted and do not have reply options. But you can decide the number of contacts you want to send to and who should receive your messages.

Using broadcasts properly can pave the way for email lead generation. Apart from that, email broadcasts can make your email marketing efforts a lot smoother. Let’s see how!

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Benefits of Broadcasting Your Email Messages 

Broadcasts increase efficiency and consistency in email communication. 

While email broadcasting benefits are plenty, certain risks, such as higher spam complaints, can come in the way. We unpack the risks of broadcasting an email message and how to stay safe.

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The Risks of Sending Broadcast Email Messages

Broadcasting email messages can create excitement for your customers and boost sales.

The best way to send a broadcast email is to write a clear and engaging message that resonates with the wider interests of your audience. To maximize the effectiveness of your broadcast campaigns, let’s learn the types of email broadcasts.

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4 Types of Broadcast Emails 

Newsletters

Email marketing newsletters are the most common type of email broadcast to distribute company updates, industry news, product promotions, etc. If your company has a blog, you can send newsletter round-ups of your latest blog posts to your subscribers. 

There are over 10 types of newsletters, and choosing one depends on your email marketing objective. A well-done newsletter can increase website traffic and encourage more clicks to your product page. Plus, newsletters show subscribers what they can expect from your brand in the future.

Important Updates

Broadcast emails are a great way to keep your subscribers updated about your business changes. 

Interested subscribers are looking forward to such emails, and broadcasts make it easier to share them.

Digests 

Digests are typically short and contain a summary of recent emails. Email digests usually focus on thought-leadership content and helpful resources. If your readers miss out on important updates, digests help them see all the information in a single email. Email digests are also a great way to share product progress updates to keep customers informed. 

Additionally, reports on user achievements help your customers keep up with their progress and achievements. 

Sales and Promotions

Broadcast emails are a good way to send sales and promotions to drive customer engagement. Here are a few email subject line examples you can use in a sales broadcast campaign.

Email Type	Subject line
Flash sale announcement	”24-hour flash sale starts now, hurry!”
Seasonal promotion	“Explore our latest fall collection with discounts”
New product launch promotion	”Introducing (product), limited time offer”
Holiday sale countdown	“Get ready for our holiday sale now”
Weekend flash markdown	”Weekend specials: Markdown on your favorites”

As you prepare your broadcast messages, ask yourself if the content resonates with the majority of your audience. 

Even though your broadcasts might not be highly targeted, be mindful of your customers’ likes and preferences. You can use segmentation and dynamic content to increase content relevance. 

Now, you might think broadcast emails sound similar to email auto-responders, but they are not.

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Differences Between a Broadcast Email and Email Autoresponders

Email Broadcasts are email campaigns you send to a certain group of subscribers. While auto-responders are automated and pre-defined emails that are sent based on specific user triggers. Let’s explain the differences in detail.

Feature	Broadcast Email	Email Auto-responders
Timing	Sent immediately or scheduled for a specific time.	Are mostly immediate and triggered by user actions – sign-ups, purchases, or form submission.
Audience type	Sent to a large and pre-defined audience.	Is more personalized and triggered by individual actions.
Purpose	Used for one-time announcements, promotions, and event updates.	Used for ongoing engagement and nurturing based on specific user actions.
Frequency	Can be sent at regular intervals based on the email marketing strategy.	Usually a part of an email drip campaign series with pre-defined intervals.
Time sensitivity	Can be used to send time-sensitive deals.	Can include time-sensitive information such as welcome emails after sign-up.

Email broadcasts provide value, are informative, and usually have compelling subject lines. Certainly, you can do more with your broadcast email, but let’s see how to set them up first.

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How to Set up Broadcast Email? – 4 Easy Steps 

Including hyper-personalized information is one way to make your broadcasts shine, yet there are more ways to increase your open rates, and here are 4 of them:

Audience Segmentation 

To make your broadcast email relevant to each of your subscribers, use a segmentation strategy. Divide your audience into smaller groups based on specific characteristics and interests. For example, if you intend to send a broadcast email about gardening tools, you must ensure your subscribers are interested in that type of content.

Next, segment subscribers based on their demographic data, psychographic variables, geographic data, and behavioral traits.
You can find this by looking at the segmented customer data. Notice their previous actions, purchases, and form sign-ups. This will give you a fair idea of where they are in the buyer’s cycle. You can then take this information and customize it to fit your audiences’ needs. If you are stuck in the process, you can use generative AI to ideate relevant content for your subscribers.

Appealing Email Design 

Broadcast emails are no different than other marketing emails and must demonstrate your brand identity and uniqueness. Craft an easy-to-read and visually appealing email to grab your subscribers’ attention. Since most emails are read on mobiles, ensure your broadcast emails are mobile-responsive and look good on smaller devices. 

Follow email design best practices and stay on top of email marketing trends.
A good practice is to test your broadcast messages on different email clients before sending them out. This way, you will know if your emails are opening and the colors, fonts, and images are spread out correctly.

Concise Body Copy and Clear CTA 

Not all subscribers will resonate with your email message equally. Many skim through email broadcasts and expect straightforward and clear language. Capture your subscribers’ attention with a strong opening, and get to the point in the first few lines.

Highlight the benefits throughout your body copy and build a sense of urgency. 

Gradually end your emails with a short and direct CTA. Strategically place your CTAs in places it’s easily visible and prominent. In addition, emphasize the benefits of your product or service and create contrast if possible. 

Use an Email Marketing Service

An ESP can help you build effective email broadcasts without much manual effort. Their built-in tools and campaign templates make it easy to create broadcasts and track analytics.

For example, Campaign Refinery allows you to create dynamic content that eliminates the need for manual segmentation and personalization every time you send a broadcast. Certainly, our elite platform offers more features, and we tell you about them further down. 

Let’s start with how gamification in broadcasts can boost your email campaign metrics and create brand uniqueness.

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Gamified Email Broadcast: A Chance to Increase Open, Engagement Rates, and Conversions

With the gamification feature, your emails become more than messages; they unlock the potential for customer excitement and loyalty. But to know if rewards are working with your customers, you must send them at a time when they are the most active and likely to click on your broadcasts.

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What is the Best Time to Send an Email Broadcast?

The best time to send emails can significantly impact your email open rates. Consider factors such as audience time zone and their behavior. Analyze past email performance to determine the patterns in your email open and click-through rates. Also, observe when your audience is most active in the week and check their mobile usage patterns. It helps you know when your audience is likely to check their smartphones, for example during the commute or in the evening.

Consistency in sending schedules is a crucial factor in subscriber engagement. Research industry standards, avoid sending emails in peak hours, and A/B test your email broadcast to gain a better understanding of the nominal timings. 

Here’s data on the best times to send broadcasts for different industries.

Industries	Best Time To Send Emails	Reason
Finance, healthcare, and recruitment	7 am – 10 am	Sending emails about what people have been worrying about overnight is found to be effective.
Leisure-based topics	10 am – 12 pm	People are settling into the day and are likely to open emails.
Green issues, energy, and technology	12 pm – 3 pm	Subscribers are likely busy with their lunch breaks, however, certain topics like sustainability catch their attention.
Travel	3 pm – 5 pm	People are wrapping up the day and likely check their emails during the commute.
Marketing	5 pm – 7 pm	26% of marketing emails are opened between 5 pm-6 pm.
Automobiles, education, Insurance	7 pm – 9 pm	Subscribers’ focus is lesser, yet they open emails that cover their interests.

Overall, Autumn is considered the best time to send marketing emails, with an average open rate of 17%.  If you are in the B2B industry, reaching your audience in the AM is better than the PM. Broadcasting emails in the mornings have the highest open rate of 30% and a click-through rate of 9.5%.

While timing is important, different factors define your email broadcast success; here are 4 of them.

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Important Factors To Consider When Sending Broadcast Emails

Aside from visually appealing design and strategic planning, it’s important that your broadcast emails reach your intended recipients.

Here are 4 factors that establish how well recipients respond to your email messages.

Verify Recipient Email Address

The most challenging task is to know if you are sending your broadcast messages to valid email addresses. Verify your recipient’s email addresses to know if they are updated and active. You can do so manually or use Campaign Refinery’s automatic email list cleaning tool to remove harmful and inactive email addresses.

The automatic email list cleaning tool cleans lists every 90 days. This way, you can continue to send email broadcasts without having to verify and update recipient email addresses manually.

Understand Audience Preferences

Even in a broad messaging scenario, understanding your audiences’ preferences helps you create valuable and relatable email content.

The best way to know your customers is to ask them and send a customer feedback email. 

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Craft Compelling Subject Lines

Curiosity-driven email subject lines are similar to movie cliffhangers. They stress human minds to complete the loop, and hence increase email opens. Keep your subject lines short and informative with active verbs. Questions in subject lines are a great way to encourage subscribers to think.

You can also include humor and wit to make them more appealing.

You can use FOMO (fear of missing out) to implant excitement and curiosity in your subscribers. Whatever strategy you choose, ensure your subject lines steer clear of spam-like words.

Despite these methods, common email broadcasting challenges can interfere with your email marketing strategy. Learn what the challenges are and how you can fix them for better broadcast campaigns.

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5 Email Broadcasting Common Challenges and Solutions

While broadcast emails are great for one-time messaging, triggered and transactional emails continue to bring more email revenue. It’s the lack of personalization and targeted content that pushes broadcasts below the other types of emails.

To add on, email broadcasts undergo these 5 challenges, requiring additional resources and planning.

1. Deliverability Issues 

Email broadcasts can end up in spam folders or never reach your subscribers’ inboxes for many reasons. Overtime, this could tarnish your email deliverability and IP reputation. It’s possible that your subscribers receive similar email broadcasts every day, and they mistakenly add your emails to the spam list. 

2. Low Open Rates

More than one in five emails do not reach the subscriber’s inbox. The result is low open rates and no engagement. 

3. Unsubscribes and complaints

Bulk messages are more likely to be seen as spam. The under-personalized and irrelevant nature of these emails can make subscribers mark your emails as spam. 

4. Low engagement

Email broadcasts can make it difficult to encourage subscribers to open and click links inside your emails. 

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5. Personalization 

Sending generic content can lead to customer disengagement. Yet, personalizing content in email broadcasts can be time-consuming. 

Broadcast email is a wide term and requires experience to handle high-volume tasks. However, you can always rely on a reputable ESP, such as Campaign Refinery, to help you build the best email broadcast campaigns.

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Why You Should Send Email Broadcasts with Campaign Refinery 

When you are handling broadcast campaigns, excluding certain contacts from your campaigns can be difficult. Luckily, Campaign Refinery has the tools and features to help you create, customize, and send your broadcast emails on time. 

You will be able to start with our campaign library with preloaded sequence templates. Then, you can customize these templates by filtering by campaign type. Finally, you can schedule your broadcast campaigns with the most active and engaged contacts.

To help you get a real-time image of how it’s done, let us show you examples of successful broadcast emails.

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4 Examples of Email Broadcast Campaigns

We will show you how to get the most out of your broadcast email campaigns with top takeaways from each example.

1. Product Release – Zencastr

The brand likely uses an email template to create minimalistic and eye-catching designs that work well for all types of audiences.  

2. Orangewood Guitars — Email Digest 

Orangewood uses a clean email digest design for sharing pro tips. It demonstrates value through expert lessons offered every week. With three sections focusing on weekly lessons, beginner and advanced tips, the brand creates trust and credibility with its customers. Notice how it provides value and cuts to a strong CTA in the end.

3. Announcement Email — Pelago 

Pelago’s announcement email is straightforward and easy to read. The email header contains immediate information about the email and leads to a CTA. Pelago’s font choice is a noteworthy attribute in this announcement broadcast.

We hope these examples inspire you to create great broadcast email messages, and we are here to make this process effortless for you.

Launch Your Broadcast Email With Campaign Refinery 

Generalized email blasts are usually difficult to personalize and engage audiences. But, with Campaign Refinery, you can send all types of broadcasts with the highest deliverability rate in the market.

Our automatic email list cleaning tool keeps valid email addresses only. That means your valid contacts stay safe while the harmful ones are removed.