Email marketing is an essential tool in your overall marketing strategy with lead generation, brand awareness, and building meaningful customer relationships. Microsoft Outlook has been a trusted software for managing email campaigns for decades. Now, think about how email marketing using Outlook can be a boost.
If you’re interested in using email marketing with Outlook, you’ll be glad to learn that you can send out marketing communications from this email client. 😊
In this guide, I’ll explain the capabilities & challenges of Microsoft Outlook for email marketing, focusing on topics such as sending bulk business emails, mail merge, and other fields.
So, keep reading. 👀
Can I use Outlook for Email Marketing?
Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft that helps users communicate effectively with their target audience, create, send, and manage marketing emails, draw up schedules, and find what they need quickly & easily.
Primarily known as an email client, Microsoft Outlook can be a valuable tool for managing email marketing campaigns for any client.
Although Outlook may not be as specialized as a professional email marketing software, in 2024, more than 2,805,509 companies worldwide started using it as an email management tool.
One of the great features & strengths of Outlook is its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with other Microsoft Office tools like Word & Excel. This makes it easy to create content and manage contact lists for your campaigns, as well as makes it one of the most widely used tools available to many businesses.
You can design personalized emails without technical knowledge and organize your campaigns within the familiar Microsoft ecosystem.
However, it’s worth noting that Outlook can only be a suitable choice for sending bulk emails to a smaller list or smaller businesses looking to interact with a manageable number of recipients.
If you want to know the challenges of using Outlook, we’ll explain them in the last section of this article. 👇🏼
How to Send Bulk Marketing Emails in Outlook?
Sending professional bulk emails in Outlook is simple & free. Using Outlook’s mail merge feature is still a good option if you only want to send a few bulk messages.
In this section, I’ll show you how to use mail merge to send mass personalized emails in Outlook.
Here’s the simple step-by-step process to send personalized bulk marketing emails via Outlook 👇🏼
Step 1. Draft Your Email Content in Microsoft Word
Open “Microsoft Word” and write your email message content.
💡 Pro tip: To see how it looks with images or GIFs in your email, go to the “View” tab in the menu and select the “Web Layout” option from the “View” section. ⤵
Step 2. Start Mail Merge
Once your email draft is ready, move on to the next step: “Mail Merge.”
In Microsoft Outlook, click the “Mailings” tab and choose the “Start Mail Merge” option from the “Start Mail Merge” section. ⤵
Then, From the drop-down menu, select “E-mail Messages.” ⤵
📌 Important note: The next time you start Mail Merge, the “E-mail Messages” option will be highlighted and show it’s already active.
Step 3. Choose Your Email Recipient List
Go to the “Mailings” tab and click “Select Recipients” in the “Start Mail Merge” section. ⤵
When the drop-down menu opens, you’ll see three options there. ⤵
⬆ 1. Type a New List: This option lets you manually enter the contact details of your new email list, including first Name & last name, company name, and email address.
2. Use an Existing List: By selecting this option, you can import contacts from a file (like an Excel spreadsheet).
💡 Pro tip: Make sure it has at least the First Name, Last Name, and Email Address columns.
3. Choose from Outlook Contacts: Using this option, you can select contacts saved in your Outlook address book.
When done, click “OK” to save your new list as a file on your computer. ⤵
Step 4: Personalize Your Email Message
In this stage, you can personalize your email by choosing the “Greeting Line” and “Insert Merge Field” options:
Again, navigate to the “Mailings” tab, and in the “Write & Insert Fields ” section, pick the “Greeting Line” option. ⤵
Then, after making changes, click the “Ok” button.
This option lets you add a greeting to your message and adjust the opening salutation (e.g., Dear [Name]). ⤵
💡 Pro tip: You can add any column entry to your email recipient list by selecting the “Insert Merge Field” option.
Step 5: Send Your Emails
When everything looks good, to send your first bulk mailing, click the “Finish & Merge” option and choose the “Send Email Messages” option from the dropdown menu. ⤵
In the pop-up window, enter your subject line into the “Subject line” field, click “OK,” and your emails will be sent. ⤵
How Do You Send Bulk Emails from Outlook Using Excel?
You can send bulk emails in Outlook using an Excel spreadsheet and the “Mail Merge” option. To do this, follow these simple steps:
Step 1. Open an Excel spreadsheet and enter your recipients’ contact information, such as first name, last name, company name, email address, and more.
Step 2. Open a Word document and write your email body in it.
Step 3. Click the “Mailings” tab in the main menu at the top of Word, open the “Start Mail Merge” drop-down menu, and choose “E-mail Messages.”
Step 4. In the “Mailings” tab, first, click “Select Recipients” and then on “Use an Existing List.” ⤵
Finally, select the Excel spreadsheet from your computer and click “OK.” ⤵
Step 5. In the “Mailings” tab and the last section, click the “Finish & Merge” tab and choose the “Send Email Messages” option from the drop-down menu.
Step 6. In the “Merge to E-mail” pop-up window, fill in the “To,” “Subject line,” and “Mail format” fields, and then click “OK.” ⤵
So easy, right? Next, let’s explore the downsides of using Outlook for email marketing campaigns.
The Top Challenges of Email Marketing Using Outlook
You may want to use Outlook to send bulk emails, but you’ll quickly be disappointed by the challenges & disadvantages that you face with this platform.
Let’s take a look at these challenges of email marketing with Outlook ⤵
- Limited scalability: There’s a daily limit for sending bulk emails in Outlook. Because this platform isn’t designed for high-volume email campaigns, sending mass emails will trigger spam filters and restrict your account.
- No automation features: Unlike other email marketing tools, Outlook lacks automation capabilities such as tracking, reporting, scheduling, drip campaigns, etc.
- No professional analytics: To accurately measure the performance of email campaigns, you need tracking & analytics metrics, including open rate, click-through rate, conversion, etc. Unfortunately, Outlook lacks these key metrics.
- Manual email personalization: Although Outlook’s Mail Merge feature allows you to personalize email messages, you need advanced options like email list segmentation to launch bulk email campaigns.
- Design limitations: Outlook doesn’t support some advanced email design features, which limits email templates and coding resources.
- No email preview: You can’t preview emails via Outlook to see how they’ll look on different devices & browsers before sending.
- Marking as spam: Mass emails sent from Outlook, Yahoo, or other email clients are often marked as spam by ESPs & email recipients. As a result, spam reports affect your sender’s reputation, as well as make it less likely that you’ll be able to access your recipients’ inboxes in the future.
Create Effective Email Marketing with Outlook Via CUFinder
According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing is the most profitable marketing resource, with an ROI of $44 for every $1 spent!
To use that kind of ROI, you should invest in a professional email enrichment tool like CUFinder and also a dedicated email marketing service like MailChimp. Outlook alone straightforwardly won’t cut it with its limited marketing functionality.
To overcome the challenges of email marketing using Outlook, CUFinder is very helpful. CUFinder allows you to enhance your email marketing efforts and campaign effectiveness as well.
🎯 Here’s how CUFinder works:
- Having access to verified & clean contact data such as email addresses and growing your contact list with CUFinder’s largest database of individuals and companies (419+ M contacts & 269+ M businesses).
- Reducing bounce rates, avoiding spam filters, and also improving deliverability with the Free Email Verification service of CUFinder.
- Segment your audience by demographics, geographics, firmographics, or behaviors for better-targeted campaigns with CUFinder’s accurate enriched data (98%+ data accuracy).
- Crafting highly personalized messages that boost customer engagement with CUFinder’s multiple email enrichment services (Personal email finder, company email finder, LinkedIn email finder, free Chrome extension tool, etc.).
Now, take your email marketing strategy to the next level with CUFinder. 🚀
FAQs
1. What is the bulk email limit in Outlook?
One of the downsides of Outlook is that it has a limit of 500 recipients per email and 10,000 emails per day. For larger email lists, you’re better off using an email marketing platform like Mailchimp.
2. Can I use Outlook as a CRM in email marketing?
Yes, you can only use Outlook for basic CRM functions in email marketing, such as contact management or email personalization. However, for advanced features of professional CRM tools, you employ Microsoft Dynamics 365, which offers a wide range of capabilities of a CRM system.
3. Why can’t I send bulk emails in Outlook?
Due to the daily email limit in Outlook, you can’t send bulk emails to this email service provider (ESP).
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