Broadcast email marketing is generally used to share important updates, promotions, and announcements with multiple recipients at once. It’s an intelligent way of getting your message to your target audience at large.
Brands use broadcast emails to connect with large audiences, promote offers, and drive engagement in a cost-effective and timely fashion.
This guide explores the different types of broadcast emails, along with real-life examples, to inspire your next campaign. We’ll also provide best practices for crafting a successful broadcast email.
Let’s get started.
Reach a wider audience and drive more sales with broadcast emails from Omnisend
Unlike autoresponders, which are triggered by specific user actions, broadcast emails are scheduled and sent at a chosen time by the sender
Personalization and segmentation increase broadcast email engagement via tailored product recommendations and location-specific promotions
Compliance with email marketing regulations is essential to build trust, avoid being marked as spam, and maintain a positive brand reputation
Key performance metrics to track effective broadcast email include open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates
Email broadcast software with automation features can help streamline the process of sending broadcast emails, reducing manual effort and errors
What is a broadcast email?
A broadcast email is an email message distributed to a large number of subscribers at the same time. It’s commonly used for sharing newsletters, announcing promotions, or delivering important updates to a broad audience.
Often referred to as bulk or mass email, this type of communication respects recipients’ consent, ensuring GDPR compliance. For a more efficient process, businesses usually rely on mass email services to manage large-scale campaigns.
Broadcast emails are most effective when personalized, allowing businesses to tailor content to their audience’s preferences and behaviors. Also, sending personalized emails enhances engagement because it ensures that the message feels relevant rather than generic.
Difference between autoresponder and broadcast email
People often get confused between “what is a broadcast email ” and an autoresponder. Well, they’re both essential in email marketing but have significant differences. Here’s a detailed comparison:
1. Autoresponder email
Definition: An autoresponder is an automated message triggered by an event or specific recipient-initiated action. It’s a typical part of an email workflow designed to respond to individual behaviors or milestones in real time. These emails follow a sequence that a marketer has set based on certain rules.
Purpose: Autoresponders are used mainly for lead nurturing. They also keep customers engaged over time. Such is the case of a drip marketing campaign that provides tailored content aligning with the recipient’s buying journey. This guides recipients towards taking a desired action, such as making a purchase or attending an event.
Timing: These emails are automatically sent when triggered by a specific event or time-based condition. Examples include:
Signing up for a newsletter
Abandoning a shopping cart
Downloading a resource, such as an ebook or guide
Filling out a form
Personalization: Autoresponders are highly personalized. They utilize data like user behavior, preferences, or purchase history. This makes them particularly effective in delivering relevant content.
Use cases:
Welcome emails that greet new subscribers
Drip campaigns, a series of emails sent to educate or nurture leads over time
Transactional emails, such as order confirmations or shipping updates
Subscription renewal notifications
Example: Let’s say someone signs up to download a sample ebook from a brand’s website like below:
An autoresponder sequence may follow up with a thank-you email, an introduction to the company, and additional resources to guide them toward becoming a customer.
2. Broadcast email
Definition: A broadcast email is a one-time message sent to a large group of recipients simultaneously. Unlike autoresponders, it’s not triggered by user behavior but scheduled and sent at a specific time.
Purpose: The main goal of a broadcast email is to deliver time-sensitive information or updates to an entire email list or segments. They’re often used for invitations, general announcements, and promotions.
Timing: Broadcast messages are sent at a time the sender chooses. They don’t depend on the recipient’s actions. They’re strategically scheduled to align with marketing campaigns.
Personalization: A broadcast email can include basic personalization, such as addressing the recipients by their first name. However, it’s less tailored than autoresponders. Its content is more general and appeals to a broader audience.
Use cases:
Newsletters featuring company updates or industry insights
Promotional campaigns announcing discounts and special offers
Example: A retail brand can send a broadcast email to its subscribers using a discount pricing strategy to announce a holiday sale. It can invite everyone to take advantage of the discounts during a limited-time event.
Choosing the right option
Autoresponders are ideal for creating connections and guiding users through a series of steps over time. That’s why they’re an excellent choice for building long-term relationships. Broadcast emails, on the other hand, are best suited for delivering urgent updates or promoting offers to a big audience.
Both types of emails work in tandem for a successful marketing campaign. They serve a unique purpose, ensuring your campaigns are timely and engaging while meeting marketing objectives effectively.
This promotional broadcast email drives sales by announcing a limited-time flash sale. It highlights a 20% discount on all T-shirts, with key elements like a bold headline, a clear call to action (“SHOP MENS” and “SHOP WOMENS,”) and a sense of urgency with the expiration date.
Additionally, the broadcast email design is clean and visually appealing. It’s easy for the reader to understand the message and take action. It also displays specific products with images, names, and discounted prices to entice customers further.
The overall goal is to encourage immediate purchases using a discount pricing strategy while leveraging time sensitivity and visual appeal to engage subscribers effectively. This type of broadcast email is particularly effective during peak sales periods. It creates a clear and focused message that resonates with customers looking for value.
2. Informational broadcast email
Image via Really Good Emails
This informational broadcast email example from Figma is designed to educate and engage users by providing valuable updates, guides, and resources. This newsletter highlights key product developments, such as upcoming plugin features. It also shares tips to improve workflows, such as developer handoffs and typography systems.
The email is neatly organized, with visually distinct sections that use bold colors and icons to differentiate topics. This ensures readability and a modern aesthetic. Each section includes concise descriptions and hyperlinks, encouraging readers to explore additional resources, articles, and livestreams.
Additionally, the opening message from the Community Manager adds a human touch. It gives a sense of connection with the brand. This friendly tone can help nurture a long-term relationship with subscribers.
Overall, this email keeps users informed and enhances their skills with Figma. It ensures that subscribers remain engaged over time, saving you time on email list cleaning to remove unengaged or inactive subscribers.
3. Event broadcast email
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This event invitation broadcast email from Harney & Sons promotes an online event. At the same time, it spotlights its products in a way that complements the theme. The email invites subscribers to a live presentation titled “Foods & Feasting in Shakespeare’s Time” with food historian Francine Segan.
As it celebrates Shakespeare’s birthday, the email taps into a unique historical angle. It offers an educational and entertaining experience that showcases the brand’s sophistication. The email’s design is visually inviting, featuring warm imagery of Elizabethan-style food and elegant typography.
Clear CTAs like “VIEW THE EVENT” and product highlights, such as Shakespeare-inspired tea blends, elegant teaware, and British pantry staples, enhance the connection between the event and the company’s offerings.
When using this type of broadcast email, you can include an event reminder option. This helps ensure recipients return to download the guide later if needed. This feature reduces the likelihood of missed opportunities for engagement.
The event invitation email effectively combines education, entertainment, and promotion to encourage event participation. It also entices recipients to explore Harney & Sons’ curated products. Events like this help brands establish themselves as experts while building stronger relationships with their audience.
4. Product or feature announcement email
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MicroAcquire’s email is an excellent example of a product announcement broadcast email. It provides users with a detailed December Product Update that’s focused on improving filters and workflow for buying and selling startups. The email has a clean, modern design featuring soft blue and purple hues, clear section divisions, and engaging visuals to keep readers focused.
The email begins with a personal note from the VP of Product, celebrating a significant milestone and adding credibility and excitement. It transitions seamlessly into new product features, such as improved filters, combined status actions, and enhanced sorting options for a smoother user experience.
Each update is accompanied by bold icons and concise descriptions to ensure clarity. For users who prefer a guided look, the email includes a video walkthrough, accommodating varying learning preferences.
The email ends with an invitation to provide feedback. This emphasizes user-centric development and the brand’s commitment to ensuring that its audience feels heard and valued.
Overall, this announcement is engaging and well-organized. It prioritizes meaningful improvements while reinforcing a strong connection with its audience.
5. Educational or value-driven broadcast email
Image via Really Good Emails
Here’s an educational broadcast email from 1973 Ltd, introducing a comprehensive and interactive PDF email marketing guide. With a clean, professional layout and clear sections, the email provides marketers with an invaluable resource to enhance their campaigns.
This email can serve as a drip campaign, where ongoing engagement can lead to a purchase. The message highlights the impressive return on investment (ROI) of email marketing and emphasizes the growing significance of email. The guide recognizes the challenges of achieving success and offers expert tips and strategies across key topics.
The email’s layout is user-friendly, with bold headings, bullet points, and clear calls to action. It reinforces trust while providing practical insights for email marketing professionals. What’s more, brands can nurture leads and position themselves as thought leaders in their industry by delivering educational content.
This Black Friday email from Omnisend features a clean, visually impactful design that drives urgency and highlights a 50% off deal. With bold typography, high-contrast colors (black and neon yellow), and a central product image, the email immediately captures attention. The “Last Chance” messaging creates a sense of time sensitivity to encourage immediate action.
The layout flows from the headline to the discount button, a product showcase, and a clear call to action button labeled “MORE” to push clicks and conversions.
If you’re looking to create stunning, high-converting seasonal campaigns like this, explore Omnisend’s free template gallery. With professionally designed templates, you can customize emails for holidays or any promotions.
Seasonal broadcast emails like this not only generate sales but also strengthen brand visibility during competitive shopping periods. When executed with clean design and focused messaging, they can bring in significant revenue within a short period.
Create professional emails in minutes with Omnisend’s free newsletter templates
Going utilizes the survey and feedback broadcast email as a strategic move to gather valuable feedback from its subscribers. It presents a simple “Yes/No” question, aiming to quickly assess user satisfaction.
This approach allows Going to gauge overall sentiment quickly. The design is visually appealing. Also, the question is clear and concise, making it easy for users to respond.
The data collected from this survey will likely be used to refine the brand’s offerings, enhance user experience, and potentially address any emerging pain points.
This proactive approach demonstrates the brand’s commitment to understanding and meeting the needs of its customer base. Brands that actively seek feedback and adapt their strategies accordingly are more likely to build trust and loyalty with their audience.
8. Internal broadcast emails
Image via Airmeet
This broadcast email by Retail Global serves as an invitation to an employee event, specifically the “80’s Block Party.” The email’s primary purpose is to generate excitement and encourage attendance among employees.
It discloses important event details, such as the theme, dress code, date, time, and location. This makes it easy for recipients to plan. The email also emphasizes the casual and fun atmosphere with mentions of food, drinks, and DJs. This playful element encourages participation.
The company uses a visually appealing design with retro graphics and vibrant colors, capturing attention and creating a sense of nostalgia.
This email effectively communicates the event details and creates anticipation among employees, making it a successful internal email campaign.
9. Re-engagement broadcast email
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Here’s a re-engagement email from Local Guides to encourage user participation. Its primary goal is to motivate inactive users to contribute photos and reviews to Google Maps.
The email uses a friendly and conversational tone, addressing the user directly and creating a sense of connection. It also mentions the positive impact of user contributions by emphasizing how they help others explore the world. The addition of a relatable, humorous image of a pug in the header makes the email visually engaging.
Plus, a prominent call to action (“CONTRIBUTE NOW”) button directs users to take immediate action. The email also provides a reminder about email preferences. This allows users to easily manage their communication preferences.
In summary, this email effectively re-engages users by highlighting the value of their contributions and making it easy for them to take action.
10. Emergency or crisis broadcast email
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Gobe uses a crisis broadcast email to address a technical error that occurred during its new website launch. The primary purpose is to apologize for the mistake, inform customers about the issue, and proactively provide a solution.
The email acknowledges the error straightforwardly and apologetically, taking full ownership of the mishap. It then provides clear instructions on how customers can access the correct discount code, either by using the previously sent code or a newly provided one.
Gobe’s email design is simple and clean. It allows recipients to focus on the key message. The inclusion of the brand logo and tagline reinforces brand identity even amid this unfortunate situation.
Overall, this email effectively communicates the issue, offers a solution, and maintains a professional and customer-centric approach. It mitigates potential negative impacts on brand reputation.
Best practices for effective broadcast email
Creating an impactful broadcast email requires following proven practices to maximize engagement, ensure compliance, and continually improve performance.
Here’s how to optimize your campaigns:
Personalization and segmentation
Personalization ensures subscribers receive content tailored to their preferences, behaviors, or purchase history. Unlike generic mass emails, personalized messages resonate better with recipients because they address individual needs or interests, leading to increased customer engagement, open rates, click-through rates, and conversions.
For instance, personalized product suggestions, such as “You may also like” or “Recommended for you,” are based on a subscriber’s browsing history, past purchases, or abandoned carts.
That said, without market segmentation, you can’t identify different buyer personas or product interests. Segments allow you to group subscribers with similar preferences and behaviors. It enables accurate product recommendations that increase relevance and conversions.
Besides dynamic recommendations, other ecommerce personalization techniques include tailored offers and discounts, customized greetings, and location-specific promotions.
Compliance with regulations
When building an email list, staying compliant with email marketing laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM), is non-negotiable. These regulations protect recipients and help build trust with your audience.
The essentials of GDPR for ecommerce businesses involve mandatory practices, such as obtaining explicit consent, providing clear unsubscribe options, and accurately representing your identity. This enhances email deliverability and engagement.
However, when you ignore the guidelines, you risk being flagged as spam, tarnishing your brand reputation and reducing the effectiveness of future campaigns.
Additionally, compliance promotes transparency and respect for subscriber preferences. This leads to better long-term customer relationships. As you can see, prioritizing email marketing regulations isn’t only about staying on the right side of the law.
Monitoring and analyzing performance
Tracking the success of your broadcast email campaign over time is critical to refining your marketing strategy. Metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, and conversion rates provide insight into what’s working and what requires improvement.
Enhancing your email open rates involves writing compelling subject lines and understanding subscriber preference. You can also improve click-through rates by using quality images and inserting social proof to show that other consumers trust your brand.
When it comes to boosting your conversion rates, the key is to send timely broadcast emails. This is where email broadcast service providers come in. They offer email automation to allow you to deliver relevant messages to your audience when required.
Ecommerce businesses rely on email broadcast software like Omnisend for email automation. It reduces the manual effort that goes into sending bulk emails. Also, there will be less room for human errors as the software can segment contacts. This way, you can send the right emails to the right audience at the right time.
Additionally, maintaining good email deliverability practices involves sending emails to people who want them and having a high open rate, among others. They ensure your messages reach your subscribers’ inboxes instead of being marked as spam and ruining your sender reputation.
Finally, Omnisend’s features, like email analytics and A/B testing, can enhance the precision of your performance monitoring. They allow you to experiment and refine your strategies. This can empower you to make data-driven decisions that improve engagement and drive measurable outcomes.
How can you send broadcast emails with Omnisend?
You can send a free email broadcast with Omnisend using a free account. It doesn’t require you to input your credit card details. You simply sign up, and you’re good to go.
Once signed in, you’ll find a free gallery of templates. You’ll also be eligible to send broadcast emails to 250 subscribers.
Now, let us show you how to send a broadcast email using Omnisend:
Step 1: Create a campaign
Visit Omnisend.com and log into your account
Go to Campaigns and click Create email campaign
Image via Omnisend
Step 2: Configure email settings
Enter your preferred subject line or use the AI feature to create one
Input the sender’s name and email address
Write a short text that the recipients will see once they receive your email
Create a name for the campaign
Select your preferred language (Omnisend supports up to 20 languages)
The email preview will be displayed on the right side of the screen
Image via Omnisend
Omnisend allows you to automatically send email campaigns to your Facebook page. All you need to do is connect your account and Omnisend will add UTM tags to track Google Analytics.
Step 3: Select an email template
Pick a template based on Omnisend’s recommendation for your email settings or use a saved template
Select your campaign goal, theme, and type to explore further and get more template recommendations
Image via Omnisend
Omnisend’s templates are responsive. They provide a preview for desktop and mobile devices. Select one of the templates that suit your campaign and overall branding.
Step 4: Customize your email template
Add your brand elements, such as text, logo, product listing, and images
Insert a preheader to redirect subscribers who can’t view the email
Customize the email body, product listing, and email footer
Click Preview and test to view the email in light or dark mode
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Step 5: Test broadcast email campaign
Click Send test email and input your email address
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The test email allows you to double-check each component of your email as well as view what subscribers will see.
Step 6: Send email to recipients
Click Save and choose recipients
Select All subscribers or Let me choose segments
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Click Reviewcampaign to confirm the email settings and recipients
Choose Send now or Schedule for later
Check the Campaign booster button to retarget subscribers who have yet to open or click on your email
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Click Send now to send your broadcast email
Start sending broadcast emails today with a free Omnisend account
Bernard is the Sr. Director of Communications & Creative at Omnisend, with a passion for good research, helping ecommerce businesses with their marketing automation needs, and beating absolutely everyone in Mario Kart 64.
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