When it comes to marketing online, bulk email advertising campaigns are the cheapest and easiest way to reach the most people in the shortest amount of time with your message. Almost everyone who uses the Internet has an email account; imagine getting all of those people to listen to your sales pitch!
Of course, thousands of other businesses both legitimate and otherwise have the same idea and many of them are the source of the dread email spam that everyone has received at one point or another. Even if your message is an honest sales pitch rather than a “phishing trip” it’s difficult for others to tell the difference if you use the typical email channels to send it. In fact, ISPs can actually accuse you of illegal spamming if you use their email systems to send out bulk email messages.
The solution? Bulk email marketing software. Instead of using your local ISPs, this software converts your computer into its own private email server and sends the messages from there. This is legal and the ISPs will not have any qualm with you because you aren’t sending the messages through their channels.
Bulk email software sets things up by first converting your computer into the email server (don’t worry, it’s still usable for everything you usually use it for too) and asking you to enter whatever email server you would like to find addresses at (mail.com, for example). Next it sends out signals to the site verifying whether various screen names have active email accounts on that site.
The software then creates a list of the addresses that it found to be valid and you have a list of thousands if not millions of potential customers that you can send bulk emails to. Some software lets you combine the processes; you enter a message, then once it finishes collecting email addresses it will automatically send the message to the whole list. Automation at its finest!