Mass Email Marketing: Top 10 Free Tools and Best Practices for Bulk Emailing

Mass email marketing remains a powerful tool in a business arsenal in order to effectively reach their audience at scale. All too often, however, these types of emails wind up flagged as spam, and they never actually reach their intended recipients. Choosing the right tools can go a long way in making sure that emails are staying in inboxes, and reaching your target audience. In this post, I will explore the top bulk email marketing tools to help you develop effective email marketing campaigns while maximizing deliverability and ensuring compliance with industry standards. 

Although there are countless potential tools you can use to provide bulk email services, the tools I have identified below were selected for their unique ability to use free email marketing software tools. I also selected them based on my own experience, having subscribed to most of the tools mentioned at one point in my digital marketing career. As such, you can rest assured that the email service providers and marketing tools I have listed below are vetted and evaluated by me, personally, and have been found valuable. 

First, let’s take a deep dive into mass email marketing as a whole, and why I believe a mass email service is a beneficial service for your business. 

What is Mass Email Marketing?

Mass email marketing is the marketing practice that sends out an email to a large group of people at the same time. There are countless email templates used in different bulk email marketing campaigns, and mass email services can be found in numerous CRMs and other management platforms. Despite the ubiquitous nature of bulk email content, the practice remains a valuable one for marketers. It is valuable for businesses of all sizes because it is able to reach a large number of people without a great deal of extra effort. 

Sending individual emails is not only inefficient; it has a higher risk of coming back with poor deliverability, and can eat up far more of your time than it delivers a return on. Bulk sending helps reach large audiences, thereby improving engagement, keeping you top of mind, and generating leads for you to follow up with as you continue cultivating a community and building brand loyalty. 

Top 10 Mass Email Marketing Tools

The best mass email marketing tools let you build a list, segment it, send at volume, and authenticate your sending domain without paying anything until you grow. Each of the ten below has a free tier, and every one also sells paid plans, so treat the free plan as a trial run rather than a permanent home.

I have subscribed to most of these at one point or another over my career, so the shortlist reflects what I have actually sent from, not what ranks well. If you want the wider set of options with the free limits compared side by side, I go deeper in my guide to free email marketing services.

1. Convertkit

ConvertKit is one of the original email management tools that came on the market, and remains a great option for anyone interested in managing all aspects of your email marketing in one place. ConvertKit is a tool I have used personally and professionally, and its ease of use and single-platform management system makes it an ideal tool for small and large businesses, alike. 

2. Sender

Sender combines email marketing and SMS marketing, allowing you to easily and quickly integrate the two. Sender allows you to automate texts and emails, from idea to delivery. Sender offers segmentation, newsletter and email templates, and a free option for smaller businesses with fewer needs. 

3. Moosend

Moosend bills itself as the easiest email marketing tool currently on the market, and with good reason: Moosend offers segmentation, A/B testing, and full email management. Moosend is useful, too, in that it offers a range of automation tools to remove some of the tedium from sending out emails, and improves the ROI of your email marketing campaigns. 

4. Sendpulse

Sendpulse is a CRM that pulls double duty as an email management system. Sendpulse can be used to develop email campaigns from the ground up, with complimentary templates available. It can also be used to automate email marketing tasks, develop subscription buttons and forms, and collect data for comprehensive analytics.  

5. MailerLite

Transactional emails, email analytics, subscription forms, and integrations are just some of the features found on MailerLite. MailerLite is a full-service email marketing platform. The service offers automation, as well, to help make sure that all email marketing tasks are covered and accounted for. 

6. Brevo

Brevo offers a robust enough free suite of tools, but also offers premium tools for an additional price. Brevo is a design platform, an analytical voice, and an automation machine, effectively helping users develop compelling email campaigns. Brevo is a great option for smaller businesses just starting out, as they offer automation and segmentation tools that take the guesswork out of sending out marketing emails. 

7. Aweber

Aweber is a great email marketing software for those who might feel as though they need a little bit of extra help. With a built-in integration with Canva, Aweber users are able to develop their emails from the metaphorical ground up, from design to delivery. A built-in AI tool can help uncertain users develop the content of their emails, and comprehensive design tools can help make putting the perfect marketing email together a breeze. 

8. SendGrid

SendGrid’s most significant attribute is its dedication to deliverability; the platform currently claims to have a 99% deliverability rate. This can be a great option for email marketers who have experienced some issues with deliverability in the past, or those who are primarily interested in growing an audience. SendGrid also offers integrations with companies like Amazon and Google. 

9. Mailjet

Mailjet is an all-in-one email marketing system. Its focus on customizable templates and design make it a great option for people whose goals are more aesthetically minded, versus those whose goals are based more in a specific outcome. Mailjet essentially functions as an email management system, in which teams can communicate with one another and collaborate on design. 

10. Mailgun

Mailgun’s tagline (“Built for developers, by developers”) is an apt one, as Mailgun caters to people who are familiar with the ins and outs of the back end of email marketing. Mailgun functions as an email management platform and a verification service, which is a great option for anyone eager to focus on compliance and consistency. 

Best Practices for Mass Email Marketing

Best practice in mass email marketing means sending a relevant message to a defined segment, not the same message to everyone on your list. The four habits that separate a campaign that lands from one that gets reported are segmentation, personalization, A/B testing, and compliance. Skip them and your email blasts end up in the spam folder.

Sending identical copy to your full list is the fastest way to train mailbox providers to distrust you. Way too many people do it anyway because it is easier than building segments once.

First, I’ll walk you through segmenting your audience, and why that is a valuable way to send out email newsletters and promotional emails. 

Segment Your Audience

Segmenting your audience means splitting your list into smaller groups that share something meaningful. How you split it depends on your brand, what you sell, and what you are trying to get someone to do. A skincare brand might segment by age, because a 22-year-old and a 55-year-old are not shopping for the same thing.

Segmentation is also what makes the rest of your copy work. Once you know who is in a group, you can write email subject lines that speak to that group specifically instead of hedging to please everyone.

Send Personalized Emails

An email blast need not be an impersonal message; different messaging applications and tools allow you to draw names from your contact list and send out emails personalized with names, preferences, and even references to past behavior (i.e. abandoned cart reminders, reminders of a certain product going on sale, and more). Personalized emails help build trust between you and your audience, and will have more impact than a cold email without a name, a personalized suggestion, or some identifier. 

A/B Test

A/B testing goes beyond merely plugging an email address into a contact list and sending things out en masse. An A/B test helps you identify audience preferences and habits, in order to continually develop dynamic content for your bulk email campaigns, to help engagement, email deliverability, and customer loyalty. An A/B testing process can help you determine the best subject lines for your marketing emails, can help you identify how layout and images work with your audience, and can even help you determine which email providers deliver the best tools and products for you. 

Stay Compliant

While there are plenty of general rules to follow and rules of thumb to live by, there are actual questions of compliance you must follow when sending out bulk email campaigns. With any platform offering unlimited emails, it can be tempting to hop on a bulk email sender, send emails out as much as possible, and call it a day. There are regulations in place, however, to ensure that email delivery does not become a free-for-all, and you need to keep these regulations in mind as you go about selecting your email providers and building your email marketing campaigns. 

The two most commonly discussed regulatory actions are the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the CAN-SPAM Act. The first is a series of general guidelines you are required to follow in order to maintain compliance with regulatory bodies. The most significant consideration to take into account with these regulations is permission; before sending out emails, you are required to gain permission to do so. Subscribe buttons, opt-ins, and promotional campaigns are all potential ways to gain permission–and, in some cases, you may be required to gain permission twice to send emails without penalty. 

Email marketers are also required to make sure that all communication comes equipped with the option to opt out of a single email or an email list, and email editors must also include contact information for their company or brand, in case an audience member needs to get a hold of the company. For a more robust take on these regulatory practices, you can speak to your legal team or go over the finer points, but the takeaways are as follows: consent is paramount, and communication channels must remain open. 

How to Improve Deliverability in Mass Email Campaigns

You improve deliverability in a mass email campaign by authenticating your domain, warming your sending volume gradually, and keeping your list clean. Google asks every sender to hold spam complaint rates below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%, and that number moves your inbox placement more than anything you write in the email itself.

Three techniques do most of the work, and I walk through each one below. If you want the full technical picture, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup, start with my guide to email deliverability.

One of the best ways to prevent your emails from immediately being delivered to a spam folder is through IP warming, or gradually building trust with your audience’s IP address. IP warming requires you to make the most of your signup forms not by immediately sending out a score of emails to your subscriber list, but to instead slowly begin building and adding to your communication efforts. As you send emails and they are opened and well received, you build trust and reduce the likelihood of being sent to spam by mailbox providers. At first, you must not be in constant contact. As time goes by, you can increase the number of emails you send until you reach your preferred peak. 

Email authentication is another way to make sure that your emails are not sent to spam folders. By using authentication tools like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, email marketers can reduce the risk of being sent to their subscriber list recipient’s spam folders. These tools essentially evaluate and subsequently authenticate email addresses, verifying that they are coming from the domain they claim to be coming from. 

The final suggestion I have involves your email list itself. Maintaining your email list, and going over it on a regular basis is important for several reasons, not the least of which is the risk of reducing deliverability when your email list is not “clean,” or primarily filled with engaged subscribers. To clean your email list, evaluate your email metrics and determine which emails are either not engaging (not opening emails, not clicking on any links, etc.), or any email addresses that are bouncing, or are not successfully being delivered. Removing these emails from your list can help increase the legitimacy of your campaign emails to reduce the amounts of email messages being sent to spam folders.  

Tracking and Measuring the Success of Mass Email Campaigns

Now that you have your best practices in place, you are not falling prey to the most common pitfalls that send emails to spam folders, and you are focused on email engagement, you can begin tracking and measuring the success of your campaigns. The most significant metrics to focus on include open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and bounce rates. 

Open Rates

Open rates show how many recipients opened your email, and they are the first signal that your subject line and sender name are working. Treat the number as directional. Google does not track opens and cannot verify open rate reporting from third parties, so a soft open rate is a prompt to investigate, not proof that something broke.

Watch the trend across campaigns rather than any single send. If your average is drifting down, the fix is usually subject lines, send frequency, or list hygiene, which I break down in my guide on how to improve your email open rate.

Click-through Rates

Click-through rates measure the rate at which an audience clicks on a link in the body of an email. This is often the second line of engagement, as it demonstrates how effective your calls to action are, or how well-targeted your links are. Email frequency is only one part of the puzzle; email marketers must also create an email design and email content that captures an audience enough to warrant a click-through. 

Conversion Rates

Conversion rates differ from click-through rates in form and function. While a click-through rate measures a click on any link within the body of an email, a conversion rate measures whether or not an audience member completes a specified goal. This can be clicking on a link, but it can also be making a purchase, navigating to a specific site or post, or even making an appointment. Conversion rates also measure the engagement of your audience and the efficacy of your content. 

Bounce Rates

Finally, make sure to keep a close eye on the bounce rates found in your email marketing efforts. Bounced emails are any emails that do not get delivered as intended. Rather than measuring email performance like the other metrics mentioned above, a campaign’s bounce rate identifies how many email subscribers did not receive their messages, thereby “bouncing” the email back to the sender. Bounce rates can help identify the need for a cleaner email list, or can demonstrate the need to move send times. 

Although you can manually go through and check these metrics with most bulk email service providers, a tool that can help analyze these metrics for you can be an invaluable asset. Email automation followed by metric evaluation automation can ensure that your email campaigns are not only performing well, but that they are continually being evaluated for efficacy, in order to improve customer engagement and ultimately grow a community of loyal customers. 

Frequently Asked Questions About Mass Email Marketing

Conclusion

Choosing the right mass email marketing tool can make all the difference in the success of your email campaigns. Tools offering segmentation, deliverability optimization, and analytics can help you reach a wide audience, with measurable results. Using the right tools to fit your needs, paired with utilizing best practices–think personalization and compliance–will help you achieve higher engagement rates and drive conversions. Using the tools identified above and careful planning, you can find the perfect fit for your business and elevate your marketing strategy to the next level.