Personalized and Non-personalized Bulk Email

There are two methods to send bulk email to multiple recipients - personalized and non-personalized.

Personalized Bulk Email

Personalized messages are sent independently of each other and are indistinguishable from regular non-bulk email.

The huge advantage of personalized email is that every message may be individually crafted for the recipient. It is not just the ability to insert the recipient's name - it is full control over the message content.

People generally feel better when they receive personalized messages, especially when they're greeted with their name, not with "Dear Customer", and it is nice to personalize messages to show respect to your recipients.

Unfortunately, personalized email is slow because your bulk email software has to transfer the whole text of every message.

Non-Personalized Bulk Email

Non-personalized mode allows to send one message to the list of addresses. This does not mean that every recipient will see the addresses of the whole list. It means that the text of the message needs to be transferred to the server only once, which gives huge gain in speed.

According to our bulk email speed tests, non-personalized email may be sent 15 to 250 times faster than personalized email.

The gain in speed is more dramatic when you have a slow modem connection, but even at fastest connection speeds, non-personalized mailing is still 15 times faster than personalized one.

Spam filters may throw away all non-personalized messages, and therefore it is safer to use personalized message.

Conclusion

We recommend using personalized messages whenever possible. Even if it takes 2-3 hours to send, it is worth it.

However, with large lists or if your message is big (contains graphics or attached files) sending personalized messages may be very time consuming.