Bulk emails and email campaigns solve two different use cases. Both features allow users to send emails in bulk to multiple contacts at the same time. However, there are subtle differences between the two features and how they can be used. Here’s how Bulk Emails and Emails Campaigns differ from one other:
Audience:
Bulk Emails are effective when targeting contacts that are Sales Qualified. Email blasts are meant for contacts far along the sales cycle are best sent using bulk emails. These are functional emails with minimum or no design.
For example, an email informing contacts about the expiry of their proposal can be sent via bulk email blast
Email Campaigns are ideal for targeting contacts that are Marketing Qualified. These are campaign emails best suited for targeting new and low intent contacts. They can also be used to send brand-related emails such as product updates or newsletters. Such emails are sent in the thousands and a response isn’t necessarily expected.
Ease of selecting recipients:
Sending Bulk Emails is an effortless task. Users can select a set of contacts, compose the email, and click Send to send out the email blast. Bulk emails are effective when you are looking to send an email blast to a small number of recipients.
Sending Email Campaigns is slightly more elaborate. It involves selecting the marketing list or a segment, configuring the template, fulfilling all conditions such as Pre-headers, headers, and footers before sending the email blast.
For details on how to add a contact to a list refer to:
How to add contacts to a marketing list?
For detials on how you can add contacts based on conditions to a segment refer to :
How to create and use marketing segments?
Customization:
Bulk Emails offer minimum customization in the form of placeholders and templates. Users can also personalize emails for selected recipients and send it across. However, they are not well-suited for sending well-crafted newsletters or product launch emails. Placeholders can also be used only if the field exists in the CRM.
Email Campaigns offer extensive customization while creating the email. Users can choose from a variety of templates that work out of the box. These templates are categorised based on the purpose they serve and can also be customized further to suit the brand theme. Additionally, users can also upload their own templates as HTML files and customize them.
Mode of email delivery:
Bulk Emails are offered one of two email delivery options– Product SMTP and Custom SMTP. Your account uses SendGrid as its email delivery partner. Whenever the daily email limit for an agent is reached, they will not be able to send bulk emails via product SMTP (SendGrid). However, they can switch the SMTP to a custom SMTP, for example, Gmail, and send the bulk email across. This can also ensure better deliverability and help reach the contact’s primary inbox.
Email Campaigns can be sent only via SendGrid. However, the number of emails that can be sent depends on the number of contacts in your system.
Email Limits:
Bulk Emails have a daily limit per user that varies according to plan. For example, on this highest plan, Forest, users can send a maximum of 5000 emails per day as Bulk Emails. Once this limit is reached, users will not be allowed to send bulk emails and will have to switch from product SMTP to custom SMTP.
Email Campaigns have a maximum email limit per month as 5X the number of active contacts present in the CRM. For example, if there are 10000 contacts in your CRM, you can 50000 campaign emails per month.
To know more about how marketing contact limits are calculated click here.
Link Tracking:
Bulk Emails allow users to track clicks on links and capture the same as a part of bulk email metrics. To access bulk email metrics, navigate to sale conversations ( in your left navigation bar ) > bulk email. You will find metrics on opens, clicks, deliveries. You can click on the "View details" button to get the drilldown of contacts belonging to the respective metrics. However, when more than one link is added to the email blast, there is no way to turn off link tracking on individual links. The metrics will display the overall number of clicks.
Email Campaigns also allow users to track clicks on links that have been embedded in the subject. However, users can select the links that need to be tracked and whom the clicks need to be tracked, and ones that can be omitted. Metrics of your email campaign can by viewed by clicking on the email campaign of your choice after it's sent > Navigate to the metrics tab for an overview of your campaigns performance.
Analytics:
With Bulk emails, users can derive reports such as open rates, click rates, and status. Navigate to Analytics > New report and make use of the "Sales emails" metric for the same. You can use the subject of your bulk email to filter out your bulk email's data.
Email Campaigns captures extensive details that can be used to derive reports. Users can go beyond conventional metrics like open rates, clicks and get more details about the performance of the campaigns with analytics. Users can derive details such as opens by segments, location, devices, etc. You will find a non-editable curated report when you click on your email camapign and navigate to the "Analytics" tab.
If you wish to edit the metrics, you can navigate to the analytics module and create your report with the metric "Marketing emails".