The essence of bulk email is in the first word. The more, as they say, the merrier or, to be more exact, the bigger the profit. However, what the higher number of subscribers gives you is the ability to predict with a considerable degree of accuracy their response to an email.

You will have been advised on these pages, and elsewhere in all probability, that you should be careful when asking for details from new subscribers to you email lists. It is all too easy to put people off by giving them a whole list of questions to answer. Whether it is privacy or just the time it takes does not really matter for this argument. All you need to accept is that it happens.

The absolute minimum is a name and an email address. The latter is unique so you will use that to specify the person. You might be wondering where all this extra detailed information will come from. The answer is your email service provider.

Whenever you send a bulk email you will get back information that is specific to each subscriber. At its most simple you will know whether they opened the email, clicked-through to a landing page and, of course, bought the product. Such information is vital for targeting. For instance, if they clicked-through then you know that the item was of interest to them. If they then failed to buy you also know that something was wrong with the offer, but just for that one subscriber.

You will have a number of different email marketing lists and the subscribers in each will vary depending on the information you have on them. Only getting as far as the landing page could be sufficient reason to list them together. They are the ones who wanted more.

With the data returns from your email service provider you will be able to create a variety of email marketing lists which have various things in common. You can then target the email specifically for them. Having such information is the essence of bulk email marketing.

Next week: how to obtain details more actively.