Mythbusting: Is Mass Email Marketing Relevant in 2025?

Here’s one of the most commonly heard questions about email marketing in 2025: Is mass email marketing dead?

As people hear conflicting information from different sources, they seem to think mass email marketing is a thing of the past. Well, we firmly stand behind the claim that mass email marketing is very much alive. 

In fact, it’s the whole ballgame! 

But before making any more claims, let’s go back to the basics and revisit the definition of mass email marketing. This will help us answer why it got such a bad rep and shed some light on where the confusion comes from. 

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What is Mass Email Marketing?

Mass email marketing is a promotional method where marketers create and distribute a single email to a large number of email marketing subscribers. The goal is to get as high open, click, and conversion rates as possible. Mass email is also known as bulk email and mass email marketing as bulk email marketing.

There are several names for this technique: mass emails, bulk emails, or email blasts (e-blasts). At Campaign Refinery, we call them broadcasts or broadcast emails!

The next section offers a more detailed mass email definition.

Mass Email Meaning Explained

Let’s first define mass email.

A mass email is simply sending one email to many people at once. Think of a time when you sent a critical work email to multiple work colleagues. The difference is that, in email marketing, you send a marketing bulk email to a valid email address list.

Also called mass email advertising, it strategically distributes content to a large audience. It’s about reaching potential customers directly, promoting products, or sharing information efficiently.

Are Mass Emails and Mass Email Blasts the Same Thing?

Generally, mass emails and mass email blasts refer to the same concept: sending a single email to a large group of recipients simultaneously. 

However, “email blast” sometimes carries a connotation of less targeted, more indiscriminate sending. While mass marketing emails are sometimes sent to a segmented list and include basic email personalization, a mass email blast might imply a broader, less refined approach.

Does Mass Email Marketing Work?

Contrary to the belief of some, mass messaging is one of the best practices of email marketing. 

We agree there are certain limitations regarding personalization; tailored messages may have better open rates and click-through rates in principle, but mass emails get quite a lot of traction if you distribute them to a healthy email list. 

Mass email marketing, when done strategically, delivers impressive results. You can reach vast audiences instantly, promoting offers and building brand awareness. They’re cost-effective and measurable; they provide valuable data for optimizing future strategies, ensuring a strong ROI to your email marketing costs.

Mass Email Marketing is Different From Cold Emailing

We’ve already explained what is mass email marketing; does it sound a lot like unsolicited emails, aka cold emails? 

Mass email marketing is not at all the same as cold emailing. 

A common misbelief that cold emails equal mass emails is what caused confusion about the effectiveness of this popular practice. Although cold emails are something marketers advise against — for example, Campaign Refinery strictly forbids cold emailing — some senders still use the mass email technique to reach out to customers and prospects this way. 

You should know sending unsolicited emails to large audiences will give you a bad email sender reputation; it can be the cause of many spam complaints, and it’s illegal in most jurisdictions!

However, sending mass emails to known, vetted audiences is a powerful digital marketing technique any business can apply. Think regular updates, offers, sales, and, of course, email marketing newsletters. 

Mass Email Marketing Statistics

Everyone knows email marketing is a channel with one of the highest ROI, and we can tell you — this is not by chance. 

Did you know that there are about 4.15 billion email users in the world? That’s almost twice as many as social media users — numbering approximately 2.35 billion people. It means you get the opportunity to reach out to almost twice the number of potential customers, the conversions, everything! 

Furthermore, over 30% of Americans don’t trust social media companies with their private data, so email is the more secure, logical solution for them. 

Solely looking at numbers, email is hard to compete with, and businesses who can utilize this channel should do so. You can grow an email list even if you have already established a presence elsewhere on social media, giving your product and services more exposure. 

Is It Safe to Send 1500+ Emails at Once?

Well, yes and no. 

If you have a huge list and want to send more than 1500 emails in a day, you can do that, but not manually. Many email clients have sending limitations; for example, Gmail will let you send 500 emails per day or one email to 500 addresses. So, manual sending is pretty much disabled. 

However, there’s a solution for this, and it’s called email service providers!  (Yes, we are one of those.) Email service providers, or ESPs, can help you send thousands of emails at once, amounting to millions of messages every month. 

Campaign Refinery, for example, focuses on helping large senders improve email deliverability and open rates. This means we help businesses reach the primary inboxes of their subscribers. 

Not to brag, but we’re really good at this! With our powerful tools and more options to stimulate engagement, we know that if you keep your list clean and follow the rules, you can see your email deliverability improve by 30% — especially when sending mass emails!

So, to summarize the question: sending over 1500 emails per day is safe with the right ESP. 

Which type of mass email should you send, though? The next section has answers and insights.

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Types of Mass Emails

Over the past decade, mass email marketing has advanced from blunt email blasting to a more sophisticated promotional method. During the global pandemic, the whole world turned to the digital spheres, and the prevalence of email became apparent. 

Today, email is far from a simple message consisting of text and a few attachments. It’s possible to send responsive messages adapted for both desktop and mobile, to integrate with CSS and HTML, and to add animations or interactive elements to them. 

The evolution of email clearly suggests our notions about email marketing need to grow as well. 

There are several types of mass emails you can send, all familiar and frequently used. The burning question is whether to send a broadcast to your entire list or to adjust it according to audience segments. 

Not every message can — or should — go to everyone, and that’s where personalization and a good email segmentation strategy come in. But there are some general-purpose announcements you can easily distribute to all subscribers at once. 

To diversify between mass emails, below are the different types.

1. Mass Email Newsletter

Sharing the news from your company and the niche you’re in is the most common and the most widely known type of mass email. 

If a person opts in to get your emails, they will want your newsletter — and you can freely send a single message to all. Remember to always add value to your messages and include meaningful CTAs. It’s good to know that the newsletter was the most common mass email marketing campaign sent in 2022. 

For your newsletters to consistently reach the inbox, ensure you send them via a trustworthy mass email newsletter service.

2. Promotions

It’s perfectly alright to send promotional emails to large audiences and create a buzz for your product. There is no need to pinpoint every contact’s preference in these messages. 

You can comfortably share promos and campaigns that inform them about new or interesting products and services you offer. As long as they are voluntarily on your list, your contacts will not mind receiving promotional emails. 

3. Offers and Deals

Once you have an interested subscriber, it’s a good idea to entice them to convert. 

Campaigns that focus on acquisition drive your revenue, so inspire people to purchase your products by offering them discounts and deals. An email marketing funnel can help you with this task.

4. Retention Emails

Did you know that acquiring a new customer can cost 5-7 times more than keeping the existing one? 

That’s why it’s crucial to craft and send customer retention emails regularly. You can target a broad audience of existing buyers and send a bulk email with an offer once in a while to show appreciation and boost sales at the same time. 

5. Events

If you’re planning a big event or your business is participating in one, sending a bulk email marketing campaign to your list is alright. 

If the event is happening in a specific location, use geotagging to segment your list, but if it’s online, it’s OK to send it to all. Just remember to add the correct time and location. 

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When to Send Mass Emails

Businesses typically resort to mass emailing when they need to quickly distribute important updates, announce time-sensitive offers, or engage a wide audience with minimal effort.

Unlike transactional emails, which are sent based on individual user actions, mass email campaigns work best when the message applies to a large segment of your audience. Whether it’s a product launch, a seasonal promotion, or a critical business update, mass emails ensure consistency in communication while maximizing reach. 

7 Examples of When to Use Mass Email Marketing

Remember, for mass emailing to be effective, the content should still be relevant to the recipients; otherwise, email engagement rates may drop, and deliverability issues may arise.

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Mass Email Marketing Best Practices

This section explains how to send a mass email correctly.

A well-crafted mass email campaign should feel relevant, timely, and valuable to the recipient, not just another message lost in the clutter. You can send mass email marketing campaigns to drive sales, nurture customer relationships, and build brand loyalty. 

But to achieve those results, businesses need to balance scale with strategy. Below, we list the key best practices to ensure your mass emails are engaging and deliver real results.

1. Build and Maintain a Clean Email List

Email list hygiene is vital; regularly update and clean your email list to remove invalid addresses, duplicates, and disengaged subscribers.

A high-quality list filled with valid email addresses improves deliverability and reduces email bounce rates. Use email verification tools to clean your list regularly.

2. Segment Your Audience Whenever Possible

Even in mass email campaigns, segmentation helps tailor messaging based on subscriber interests, behaviors, or demographics. A segmented approach leads to higher engagement compared to generic bulk emails.

3. Write Compelling Subject Lines

Your email subject line determines whether recipients open your email. Keep it clear, concise, and engaging; avoid spam triggers such as excessive capitalization or misleading claims.

4. Optimize for Mobile Devices

Mobile email marketing isn’t just an email marketing trend; it’s essential.

A large portion of emails are read on mobile devices. Use responsive email designs, short paragraphs, and clear CTA buttons to ensure a seamless experience across all screen sizes.

5. Personalize When Possible

Even in mass emails, personalization — such as using the recipient’s name or past interactions — can improve engagement. Dynamic email content and merge tags help make messages feel more tailored.

6. Include a Clear and Actionable CTA

Every mass email should have a clear purpose. Whether it’s driving sales, generating sign-ups, or encouraging content engagement, ensure your CTA is visible and compelling.

7. Follow Email Compliance Regulations

Adhere to the GDPR compliance checklist and stay up-to-date with CAN-SPAM requirements. You can stay in the green by including a visible one-click unsubscribe option, sharing email sender name and details, and only emailing users who have opted in.

This prevents legal issues and protects your sender reputation.

The next section shares tips you can use when creating mass emails.

Additional Mass Email Marketing Tips

Let your creativity kick in! You’re standing in front of an opportunity to engage your audience and get them to trust you and convert. Think about the nature of your email and adapt the content to it; it should be clear which path to take then. 

Whether it’s a newsletter, an event invitation email, or a product update, you can create mass emails any way you want. Just ensure you follow the base rules and send them to a verified list. These guidelines will help you be the best mass email sender!

Up next, we examine 5 of the top mass email marketing platforms in the industry.

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Top 5 Mass Marketing Email Platforms

Reaching thousands — or even millions — of customers with a single email requires the right platform. 

A good mass email marketing tool isn’t just for blasting messages; it should offer solid deliverability and workflow automation, plus help you optimize messages for engagement. 

Some platforms are beginner-friendly, while others cater to advanced marketers with deep analytics and segmentation. Whether you need a simple solution or a high-performance email engine, there’s an option for every business.

HubSpot

HubSpot is more than just an email marketing tool; it’s an all-in-one platform. Its email marketing features integrate seamlessly with its CRM, making it a good choice for businesses to get deep insights into their audience. Personalization and automation are available, helping users craft targeted campaigns based on customer behavior. 

While powerful, HubSpot’s premium plans can be pricey, making it a better fit for growing or established businesses.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is a common name in email marketing, known for its user-friendly interface and vast template library.

It caters to beginners and experienced marketers alike, offering automation, A/B testing, and audience segmentation. With a free plan and affordable paid tiers, Mailchimp remains a popular choice for startups and small businesses looking to scale their email efforts. Read our Mailchimp review for more insight.

However, as lists grow, pricing can become a concern for some users.

SendGrid

A popular option among developers and high-volume senders, SendGrid is built for transactional and marketing emails alike.

Its API-first approach allows businesses to integrate email functionality into their apps and workflows effortlessly. SendGrid offers various tools to optimize inbox placement. 

While it offers a drag-and-drop email editor, the platform’s full potential can only be unlocked by technical users. We’ve covered other aspects of the platform in this SendGrid review. 

Moosend

Moosend is a no-frills email platform offering essential mass email features. 

It is a popular choice for e-commerce companies and digital marketers. Unlike many competitors, Moosend provides unlimited emails on its paid plans, adding to its value. Read our Moosend review for a clearer idea of what works and what doesn’t. 

Campaign Refinery

At Campaign Refinery, our users unlock high deliverability and superior engagement metrics. Besides top-tier inbox placement, we also offer users everything they’d want in a mass email tool.

This makes our platform an excellent choice for serious email marketers. The section below gives you a better idea of why we’re the best option for your mass email campaigns.

What Makes Campaign Refinery the Best Bulk Email Service Provider?

We’ve worked hard to ensure our sender reputation is off the charts; it’s the main reason so many of our users consider us the best mass email service.

Learn more about our features, plans, and pricing here!

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What to Look For in Mass Email Service Providers?

There are many ESPs on the market, and finding the right one is extremely important. Whether you’re a big sender or not, you should look into a bulk email services provider that offers high deliverability. It is the prerequisite for a favorable email marketing outcome. 

Starting from there, you should look into what type of customers they serve, what kind of tools and options they offer, and if there are any success stories. 

Let’s now learn how to choose a mass email tool.

How to Choose a Mass Email Service

Next, we explain how to do mass email marketing right.

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How to Create a Mass Email Strategy

A well-planned mass email strategy ensures your messages reach the right audience, drive engagement, and achieve your business goals. 

Instead of simply sending bulk emails, a strategic approach focuses on targeting, content, timing, and optimization. Follow these steps to build an air-tight mass email strategy.

1. Be Clear About Your Purpose

Every email campaign should have clear goals. Are you looking to generate leads, promote a product, increase website traffic, or retain existing customers? 

Setting measurable goals — such as achieving a 20% open rate or driving 500 clicks — helps shape the structure and messaging of your emails.

2. Make a Mass Emailing List

You could blast your whole email list, but you can also mix things up; not all recipients have to receive the same content. 

Segmenting your audience based on demographics, behavior, or past interactions allows for more relevant messaging. Whether you’re targeting cold leads, loyal customers, or inactive subscribers, understanding their needs ensures better engagement.

3. Create Content With Mass Appeal

Your email content and email design should align with your audience and goals. This includes solid email copywriting, structuring content for readability, and using engaging visuals.

Your message should be mobile-friendly and include a clear email CTA that guides recipients toward the desired action.

4. Harness Email Automation

Timing plays a big role in engagement — email marketing automation can simplify this task. 

Research the best send times for your audience, test different schedules, and automate follow-up emails. Email drip campaigns, trigger emails, and behavior-based sequences ensure ongoing engagement without manual effort.

5. Test Continuously

These email campaign metrics can guide you to refine your strategy. Don’t forget to use email A/B testing; also experiment with different email formats. Figure out the best time to send emails to your recipients.

Campaign Refinery Broadcasts — Highlights in Mass Email Strategy

Our customers know our UI well and can confirm that sending mass emails has never been easier! 

For this particular type of email campaign, we have an option called “broadcasts.”

Broadcasts are one-off emails you send to large audiences promoting your business, and you can create them by using our simple editor or by using the custom HTML option to implement the design made in any of the popular third party email editors. 

Our video covers email broadcasts in detail:

That’s it! 

After that, your broadcast’s success is the result of your effort and our superpowered mechanisms. You can track it with our detailed analytics tool. 

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Do Mass Email Campaigns Work?

You betcha! But only if done well. 

This means that if you continue the old practice of sending out email blasts to poorly maintained email lists, including old lists (we don’t even want to mention purchased lists!), without proper personalization, filled with spammy subjects and aggressive content — no, your mass email marketing efforts will not work. 

But this is not the end! If you send poorly crafted emails to your subscribers, lukewarm messages to dormant contacts, or vague CTAs to anyone, you should also not expect results. 

Finally, if you choose to send bulk emails for the wrong campaigns, the action will fail. 

Mass Email Best Practices for Bulk Campaigns

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Personalization in Mass Emails

Even though mass email marketing is alive and well, it doesn’t mean you can just blast your messages across the board and expect results. There are several best practices to follow, the biggest one being email personalization.

How to Personalize Bulk Emails

You can make your emails more personal by adding customer-related data to them, such as their name or their email address to the “To:” field, or even a relevant interest. First, you’ll need to collect information about them when they opt in and then create customer profiles for different email list segments. 

Luckily, this process is automated, and at Campaign Refinery, we make it easy to collect all the necessary data about your customers. You can use dynamic fields to personalize your mass messages and distribute them to large subscriber groups. 

Again, by segmenting your email list properly, you can get better results since you’ll be sending highly relevant and appealing content to your subscribers. This includes recommendations or special personal offers. Branching mass email campaigns into different sales paths is also simple by adding different automated triggers and creating post-purchase sequences. 

Remember, in mass email campaigns, even a little personalization goes a long way. 

Dynamic fields or dynamic tags are a feature in email services that allows customers to create placeholders to personalize messages. Dynamic fields come in the form of merge variables, and you can use them to add subscribers’ names or other data to the message. 

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Campaign Refinery is the Best Mass Emailing Service for Inboxing

We’ve already explained why Campaign Refinery is the best mass email marketing service.

We believe businesses should definitely use mass email marketing techniques to get more leads and conversions, especially if you’re a big sender. It all boils down to sender reputation and the power of ESP tools. That’s why our team of experts dedicated years to creating the most brilliant email marketing tools that get the best results.

Some of our clients’ open rates have increased by 2, 3, or even 6 times since signing up with us, while their sender reputations are the best they’ve ever seen.

Click here to learn more about becoming a Campaign Refinery user.

Are you ready to make things work for your business, too?

Why not learn how to jumpstart your email marketing by yourself?

The Inbox Formula Teaches You How to Reach the Inbox

Here’s the deal: we will give you a gift, a document that reveals the secrets behind industry-leading deliverability, all of which you can implement yourself! 

The document in question is “The Inbox Formula,” a comprehensive guide about email setup, email list maintenance, bulletproof email practices, and industry insights to help you design your best email marketing strategy. 

Our founder and email expert, Travis Ketchum, wrote these guidelines after decades of testing and trying different strategies and techniques, and we use them to this day.

And you can have them now – free of charge!

Interested?

Download the “Inbox Formula” here: Click to download.

If you like it, drop us a line; our inbox is open!

Until then — happy emailing!

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FAQ

Why is Bulk Email Still a Popular Method for Businesses to Reach Customers? 

It offers a cost-effective way to communicate with a large audience.

Is Mass Emailing Illegal? 

It’s legal if you comply with regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, which require consent and opt-out options.

What Do Businesses Do to Send Out Mass Promotional Emails? 

They use email marketing platforms to manage lists, design emails, and automate sending.

Are Mass Emails Bulk Emails and E-blasts All the Same? 

Yes, these terms are generally used interchangeably.

Do Email Blasts Work? 

Yes, email marketing blasts can be effective for marketing when done strategically with targeted lists and relevant content.

Is Mass Marketing Dead? 

No, it’s evolved into more targeted and personalized approaches, but broad reach is still valuable.

What is the Difference Between a Mass Email and an Email Campaign? 

A mass email is a single send, while a campaign is a series of emails with a specific goal.

What Bulk Email Rates Should You Look For in a Mass Email Platform? 

Look for rates that align with your sending volume — for example, Campaign Refinery pricing is budget-friendly and ideal for senders of all kinds.

How Many Email Blasts Are Too Many?

It depends on your audience and content, but frequent, irrelevant emails can lead to unsubscribes and spam complaints. For example, a daily email blast from a fashion house might be acceptable to its audience, while a weekly update from a financial advisor would likely be perceived as overly aggressive.