Review: How GMass Makes Email Marketing a Cinch for Small Businesses
Small business owners stand to benefit from the fast and easy-to-use features provided by the bulk email service GMass.
Email marketing has been around for a long time. However, there is always some new software program that purports to have revolutionized the market.
Though these statements are often untrue, tech has seriously progressed in recent years. We took a look at GMass—a bulk email service—to review just how far these services have come over the years and why email marketing is such a powerful tool for small business owners.
GMass: The Bottom Line
For this mass email service, speed is a major priority.
When it comes to sending bulk emails, services in the past have been hitting all of the wrong points. What GMass gets right is speed.
Since sending messages is all about the metrics, the more quickly you can design a message, execute a mail merge, and throttle your messages, the better.
That’s why GMass lives up to the hype. You’ll be getting better results, higher open rates, and ultimately a greater brand awareness for your small business thanks to the unmatched speed. Not only that, but GMass also allows for sophisticated email flows that will keep your audience engaged.
To better understand the advantages and disadvantages of using GMass as your mass email service, we’re taking an in-depth look at exactly how it works, what it takes to set up an email campaign using the tool, and some of the key features. Read on to learn more!
What is GMass?
Find out how GMass was created and became the powerful mass email marketing service it is today.
GMass was created in 2015 by Ajay Goel. Dissatisfied with all of the other mass email services currently on the market, Goel decided to create a new mass email plugin that eliminates the weak spots in other services. He often found that sending mass emails was overly complicated and took far too long.
His solution would be a lightweight email plugin that can send messages faster than any other service. With user-friendliness as another key point that Goel wanted to highlight, GMass prioritized simplicity. Since 2015, GMass has exploded in popularity and has become one of the most widely used mass email marketing services on the market.
That’s why we’re taking a closer look at the plugin to see if it really does live up to the hype. Keep reading to find out the pros and cons of using GMass to send bulk emails.
GMass: Features, Pros, and Cons
Discover how GMass works and whether or not it is the right mass email service for your business.
To get started, though, we have to establish what exactly GMass does and what it does not do.
- First of all, GMass is an extension that plugs directly into Gmail. Since not every business uses Gmail to send bulk emails, some won’t be able to benefit from the features of the plugin.
- Secondly, GMass is a service that sends emails—not a prospecting service. Before you can start using GMass to send your messages, you need to establish an organized address list. So, as long as you are ready to send messages via Gmail and have a list of addresses ready to go, you can use GMass to start sending mass emails.
Now that we know how GMass is used, let’s dive into some of the specific elements of the plugin and how it compares to other similar services on the market.
Interface
As we just mentioned, Goel designed GMass with simplicity in mind. The GMass interface is incredibly simple and easy to use—even for people who are brand new to email marketing. That means that there is no barrier to entry to using the plugin, making it the perfect option for small businesses that do not have a dedicated email marketing team.
When you install GMass, you will discover that there is a red GMass button that appears next to the blue “Send” button when you open a new message. When you click on the arrow next to the GMass button you are greeted with a few key features such as personalization and tracking. These options are easily accessible and intuitive to operate, though the interface does look a bit out-of-date.
However, this is not an issue that affects the ability to send mass emails, so it’s not too big of a concern on our end. Our main takeaway is that the plugin is easy to access within your Gmail account and that the interface is simple and intuitive, as advertised.
Message Personalization
One of the biggest concerns when it comes to mass emailing is personalization. The easier it is to personalize large amounts of bulk emails, the better. So, how does GMass hold up to the competition? Once again, where GMass excels is with simplicity and speed.
To send personalized emails using GMass, you have to start with your address list in a Google Sheet. Once your addresses are organized and all of the information is input into the custom categories, you can start using the plugin to designate personalized elements of your messages.
As you navigate through the interface, you’ll notice that there is a button that resembles a spreadsheet. This button allows you to automatically input the information from your address list into your personalized messages. All you have to do is select the “Connect Spreadsheet” option and the email addresses and other information automatically populate.
Correctly Navigating the “Send” Button
One slightly tricky element to using GMass as your mass email marketing service is the send button.
As mentioned, there is a red GMass button. It appears as a part of the plugin right next to the blue send button. When you are using GMass to send bulk emails, your normal send button is rendered useless. Should you accidentally send a message using the blue button, your messages may not be personalized correctly. Additionally, your recipients will be able to see all of the other addresses receiving the message.
Luckily, if you are sending more than 20 emails at a time, the regular send button disappears. This prevents you from sending hundreds of glitchy messages.
Though it is easy to remember not to use the regular send button, it is also easy to mistakenly send out your messages using the wrong button. Since you can’t un-send messages, this is an important point to keep in mind while using GMass—especially if you are sending fewer than 20 messages.
Preventing Message Errors
If you are sending mass emails, you are likely sending more than just a handful of messages. For most email marketers, sending out hundreds of messages at once is fairly commonplace.
When using GMass to send out your messages, you need to adjust some settings to make sure that you don’t accidentally send out incomplete or incorrect messages to your audience. After all, one mistake when sending mass emails can cause people to unsubscribe or report your message as spam. To avoid a disastrous campaign, we recommend taking these steps in the GMass plugin:
- Click on the arrow next to the red GMass button.
- Select the elements of personalization you want to include in your message. The different elements auto-populate based on your address list. This is a great feature as you don’t have to remember exactly what you called your different categories.
- Test your message. This is possibly the most important step in the whole process of sending mass emails. If you don’t test your message, you could end up sending out hundreds of error-filled messages to your audience.
- Review your test email. You might find that you missed a few things. It’s always easier to see issues in a message rather than in the compose window.
Draft Feature Cuts Down on Mistakes
Another way that you can prevent errors in your messages is by saving your campaign as a draft. To save your campaign as a draft in GMass simply select the “Save as Draft” option in the section of the interface labeled “Action.”
After you’ve selected to save your campaign as a draft, GMass creates the messages so you can review them individually. Sometimes errors in campaigns only occur in certain messages, so if you have run into problems with personalization, we definitely recommend reviewing your campaign as a draft.
Compared to other mass email services, checking through the drafts is a bit cumbersome. Since it is so easy to make mistakes when sending out mass emails, it would be convenient if the plugin was able to display a message as it appears to a recipient before you can hit send. However, unlike a lot of other services, GMass is integrated into Gmail, meaning that it can only use features existing in Gmail. This is limiting in some aspects. However, on the whole, the plugin does a good job of working around the limitations imposed by Gmail.
Tracking and Reporting
One of the best parts about using GMass as your mass email service is the built-in tracking features. Tracking and reporting are essential features of any mass email service—it also just happens to be the key to running successful future campaigns.
To access tracking features in GMass, all you have to do is click on the arrow next to the GMass button to pull up the email settings. Next to the “Track” options in the window, you’ll see options to track both opens and clicks. As your audience interacts with your message, the tracking feature in GMass automatically updates. You can even stipulate that the data collected from tracking updates automatically in your address list.
This is a very useful feature to assess active vs. inactive addresses on your list. For example, if there is an address that has not opened one of your messages for the last few campaigns, you’ll be able to tell just by pulling up your address list. As you make changes to the address list, you can slowly eliminate addresses that are inactive to make room for active recipients.
Campaign Reports
Accessing your campaign reports when using GMass as your mass emails service is also super simple. Where your sent and draft folders are located on the left-hand side of your Gmail account, you’ll find a new folder titled “GMass Reports” in your account.
GMass automatically categorizes these reports by the campaign. They display all of the most important metrics you need to see as an email marketer. You can also easily download the report as a CSV file and upload the information into a Google Sheet or Excel spreadsheet to display to stakeholders or your email marketing team.
As far as easy tracking and reporting are concerned, it doesn’t get much easier, faster, or more intuitive than with GMass.
Message Deliverability
If you are sending out messages to your audience, you need to make sure they are being delivered. This is especially important for novice marketers or people starting small businesses.
Using GMass as a mass email service, it is easy to avoid exceeding your daily send limit so you can preserve your email sender reputation. GMass also makes the bold claim that their mass email service can get you the highest possible delivery rate of any of the mass email tools currently available. Therefore, we wanted to pay extra attention to how exactly GMass lives up to this lofty claim!
GMass can get users a high deliverability rate and help marketers avoid the spam folder by using a dedicated tracking domain.
A tracking domain keeps a record of your history of sending emails. As you send emails, the number of opens and clicks you get are all cataloged in the tracking domain. If you accidentally exceed the daily send limit or are sending messages that look like spam, your tracking domain will garner a bad reputation according to Gmail.
To overcome this and get your campaign to as close to 100% deliverability as possible, GMass can assign you a new tracking domain. All you have to do is send a request to GMass for a custom tracking domain, and boom! Your deliverability rate just increased!
Scheduling and Throttling
Another key feature of GMass that increases deliverability is the scheduling and email throttling. As we’ve discussed, there is a daily send limit imposed by Gmail that you have to follow otherwise you risk your address reputation. Thankfully, GMass has features that allow you to work around the send limit including message scheduling and throttling.
To schedule a message in GMass, all you have to do is click on the arrow next to the GMass button and look for the “Schedule” option. Then, you can schedule your campaign to be sent automatically at a strategic time to appeal to your audience.
If you want to send more than a few hundred emails at a time, you have to schedule them 24 hours apart from each other to avoid damaging your sender reputation. But, when you use GMass, the mass email service will automatically throttle your messages. When you use GMass you no longer have to worry about sending too many messages at once. GMass will automatically schedule them 24 hours apart without your input.
We found that these features combined do result in a very high deliverability rate. So, if deliverability is a major concern for your next campaign, GMass is an excellent option as a mass email service.
Email Flows
In addition to a high deliverability rate, GMass also offers automated services for email flows. An email flow is a series of emails sent out to a recipient with an intended action in mind. These messages work to take your audience from the top of the funnel to the bottom.
That is to say, email flows are a series of messages designed and ordered to produce a conversion.
We tried out the automatic follow-up option in GMass to see how it can produce effortless email flows. Guess what? It worked like a charm.
The automatic follow-up feature is definitely something that sets GMass apart from the competition. Using automatic follow-ups you can save time and send out more messages than ever before. Remember we said that GMass is all about speed—this is where the speed of the plugin is most clearly demonstrated.
Using GMass, you can easily write follow-up messages and schedule them in response to certain actions taken by your recipient. For example, if a recipient doesn’t open your message, GMass can automatically schedule a follow-up until you receive a response. (Be careful with this feature, though, as sending too many follow-ups can land you in the spam folder.)
The Verdict
Does GMass make email marketing faster and easier than other mass email services?
Now that we’ve explored the main features of GMass, what did we learn?
As far as mass email services go, GMass is one of the best. There isn’t much focus on the design of the interface and there are some limitations under the Gmail integrations. However, we can easily overlook these drawbacks in favor of the impressive and fast sending capabilities.
If you are looking for a plugin for sending mass emails, GMass is certainly one of the better options. GMass currently offers a limited free option and premium packages starting at $19.95/month.
Image Credit: Brett Jordan; Pexels.com
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