How to Send Bulk Emails with Gmail & Outlook?

You want to know how to send mass emails without landing in spam.

And I am here to tell you the exact process that many businesses use to send thousands of emails every week.

Here’s what I’ll cover:

• A bulk mailing method that uses a third-party email sending platform
• How you can use your ESPs (Gmail & Outlook) to send bulk emails
• Calculator to estimate the cost of sending a high volume of emails every month

Let’s start.

Quick TL;DR to Send Bulk Emails

If you’re in a hurry and want to send a high volume of emails automatically, then follow any of these three most-used methods:

1. Use an email automation tool to send highly personalized emails and manage your sending list.
2. Use Gmail or Outlook with BCC or mail merge feature.

If you want to know about these methods in detail, then keep reading.

How to Send Mass Emails With Automation (Using a Tool)

If you want the best results for your bulk email campaigns, then you need to use an email automation platform.

These tools help you save time, improve deliverability, and help you increase your email sending volume effectively.

• For Cold Emails: Use cold email software like Saleshandy to personalize outreach and manage high-volume sends.
• For Marketing Emails: Use email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Brevo for professional newsletters and automated drip campaigns.

To send bulk emails with an email automation tool, follow these steps:

1. Create or connect your email accounts and set them up for warm-up for better deliverability. Ideally, you should have a dedicated email infrastructure.
   Here’s how users do it in Saleshandy 👇
   
2. Next, you need to import or build your contact list. Just ensure that your sending list is clean. If not, you can verify emails in Saleshandy.
3. Create a personalized email sequence with condition-based follow-ups to send highly-targeted bulk emails. Here’s an example.
   
4. Create a sending schedule so that all the emails can be sent automatically at the optimal time without triggering spam filters.

Process to Send Bulk Emails In Gmail

Here’s how you can send bulk emails from Gmail:

1. Create multiple Gmail accounts (Mandatory step)
   You will need 1 Gmail account for every 2000 emails you send daily because that is the limitation of Google Workspace accounts.
2. Add your email in the “To” field and all your recipients in the “BCC” field.
3. Now write the subject line, email copy, and CTA.
   
4. Once you are satisfied with your email copy, hit the send button.
5. Now you have to repeat this process until you send your target number of emails!

Common Problems Users Face While Sending Bulk Emails in Gmail

There are chances that even if you follow the bulk emailing best practices suggested by Gmail, your emails might land in the spam folder.

Because it’s pretty obvious that if you send the same email to 10,000 recipients, it can trigger spam filters.

To avoid this issue, segment your recipients and personalize your email according to their needs. This will help you improve email deliverability.

For example, if your recipients have Gmail accounts, it is better to use Gmail to send mass emails. Same for Outlook accounts.

There have been discussions in Google’s forum about deliverability issues when some users sent mass emails from Outlook to Gmail.

Even though it’s not openly stated by Gmail or Outlook, it’s better to avoid a mismatch in sender and recipient ESPs.

Process to Send Bulk Emails In Outlook

Here’s how you can send bulk emails from Outlook:

• Step 1: Prepare Your Email Copy
• Step 2: Create Your Email List
• Step 3: Upload the Email List to Word
• Step 4: Add the Merge Tags
• Step 5: Preview Your Email Copy
• Step 6: Send the Email

Step 1: Prepare Your Email Copy

First, create a copy of your email in Microsoft Word.
Go to Word, then click on “Mailings” > “Start Mail Merge” > “E-mail Messages.”

While creating your email, don’t forget to add placeholders like {{Name}}, {{Company}}, etc., where you want to insert your recipient’s details.

Once you’re done, just minimize the Word document (don’t save or close it) so you can move forward with the process.

Step 2: Create Your Email List

Open a new Excel workbook and create your email list.

Along with the email addresses, make sure to include details like first name, last name, and company name.

Pro tip: Double-check the information—if something’s wrong, it won’t merge correctly!

Save the list!

Step 3: Upload the Email List to Word

After saving your list, go back to your Word document.

Click on “Select Recipients” > “Use an Existing List,” then choose your email list and upload it.

Step 4: Add the Merge Tags

Now, this step is important!

Go to “Insert Merge Fields.” This will show you all the merge tags you’ve added to the email.

Make sure to replace the placeholders with the correct merge tags in your email. If you skip this, your emails won’t be personalized correctly!

Step 5: Preview Your Email Copy

Preview your email by clicking on the “🔍” icon to check the “Preview Results” feature.

Step 6: Send the Email

Once everything looks good, click on “Finish & Merge” > select “Send E-mail Messages.”

In the pop-up, add your subject line and, in the “To” field, select “Email Address.”

Click “OK,” and you’re done!

Also Read: How to Schedule an Email in Outlook?

Common Problems Users Face While Sending Bulk Emails in Outlook

Many Outlook users have reported that their mail merge does not work properly.

One of the most common reasons is the issue with the data source.

Many times, users overlook data formatting in the source file. This results in mismatched fields.

So, whenever you are done with the set-up, you should double-check if all the merge fields (like <<FirstName>>) are correctly formatted and match the fields in your data source.

How Much Does It Cost to Send Bulk Emails?

The cost of sending bulk emails depends on two major factors:

1. Email Infrastructure Cost (sending domains & email accounts)
2. Automation Platform Cost (if any)

1. Email Infrastructure Cost

As per most successful cold emailers, you should send 30-50 emails daily from an email account.

Now, it is also recommended to keep separate sending domains so that you don’t ruin the sender reputation of your primary domain.

Domain cost: $10-$15 per domain per year.
Email account cost: $3-$5 per account per month.

2. Automation Platform Cost

If you are planning to use an email automation platform (for marketing or emails), it will have different charges based on the monthly emails and active prospects.

• For sending bulk cold emails, it can cost around $60-$80 for sending 10,000 - 20,000 emails every month.
• For sending mass marketing emails, it can cost you around $20-$40 per month for every 10K emails.

Why Gmail & Outlook Are Not Suggested for Sending Bulk Emails Directly?

Using an ESP (like Gmail or Outlook) makes it very easy to send a lot of emails in a short amount of time.

But it comes with a lot of serious limitations. Because ESPs aren’t meant for sending bulk emails.

Here is the list of problems that you might face:

1. Daily Sending Limit
2. No Way to Properly Track Bulk Emails
3. Lack of Personalization Options
4. Low Email Deliverability

1. Daily Sending Limit

The primary issue that ESPs (especially Gmail) have is sending limits

With Gmail’s paid (Workspace) email account, you can only send a maximum of 2,000 emails within 24 hours.

The same is the case with Outlook. You will be capped at the daily sending limit of 10,000 recipients per day.

And the funny part is that you can’t even exhaust your limit every day, let alone bypass the set limit.

Because if you do so, Gmail will think that you are using it to spam people and block your account for 24 hours or so, stating that your activity looks suspicious.

2. No Way to Properly Track Bulk Emails

The next issue with these ESPs is that there is no way to check the performance of the campaign.

Without analytics, you can only guess what worked and what didn’t. This actually wastes your time and efforts.

Moreover, without proper tracking, you have no way to improve your emails.

For example, you can’t see which subject lines performed well, which email copy got the most replies, or whether my emails landed in inboxes.

3. Lack of Personalization Options

Nor Gmail or Outlook have email personalization features. Therefore every email looks like a copy-paste job, which doesn’t make a great impression.

Nobody was, is, or will be interested in reading generic emails!

4. Low Email Deliverability

Deliverability is a big issue when you send a large number of emails in a short span of time.

Why? Because for ESPs, user experience is most important!

If it notices that you are sending emails in high volume but very few people are engaging, replying, or blocking your emails, it will activate its spam filters.

And start landing all your emails in the spam folder!

Key Takeaways

I have shared the best way to send bulk emails in detail, along with its pros, cons, and costs – now it’s up to you which method you choose.

However, regardless of the decision you take, there’s 1 golden rule you must follow to send bulk emails – Limit your daily emails per account to 50.

If you don’t, then your emails will land in the spam folder.

And if you don’t want to get into the technicalities, then I will suggest you to use Saleshandy.

It is a dedicated software that helps many businesses send cold emails.

FAQs

1. Is it possible to send 10,000 emails at once?

10,000 emails is a big number, but it’s actually scalable if you use a cold emailing platform with all the email deliverability and personalization features so that you get replies from your emails.

You can use Saleshandy, which is a good and trusted cold emailing platform for businesses globally.

2. Will ESP mismatch cause issues while sending bulk emails?

Ideally, it should not create any issues, but in bulk emails, it is ideal to send emails from the same ESP as the recipient.

3. How do you send mass emails from Gmail for free?

If you don’t want to spend anything, then the only way to send mass emails for free is by directly sending them from Gmail.

But again, this method is laborious and there are high chances that your email will be flagged by Email Service Providers (ESPs).

4. How to make bulk email sender accounts?

It is actually pretty simple to create bulk email sender accounts; all you have to do is,

• Create multiple email accounts
• Warm them up (before sending your first cold email)
• Keep their reputation high while sending emails (by continuously warming up by setting a daily percentage of emails for warmups)