Everyone has an email address and when getting started with email marketing, so why not just start using your Gmail or Outlook account to send messages? This sounds pretty legit, but if you are about to do so, go through this article and see why every email marketer advises against it.

It is very tempting to use free service that you already know how to use. But you should remember that these platforms are designed to receive messages. Unlike proper marketing solutions that are focused on sending messages. Given the ROI of 4400%, using a paid tool is totally worth it. Today I am going to explain the reasons for avoiding Gmail and Outlook to run your marketing campaigns. Let us see why using a proper tool is much better than using free email clients:

Reasons for not using a Gmail/Outlook Email account for marketing

Before diving into the cons of using a free email service provider, let us see what tempts people into using them: 

• Gmail and Outlook can be used free of cost. 
• Their interface is simple, and you can easily create an email to send recipients. 
• You can send emails straight away without any difficulty. Type the message and hit the send button. Simple.

Here are some of the basic limitations that come with sending messages Gmail/Outlook:

• They don’t support automation or analytics.
• You can’t use proper buttons for your CTA hyperlinks. 
• Different versions of Outlook have formatting limitations for text and images. 
• They restrict sending newsletters to around 100-500 contacts daily. 
• Gmail doesn’t allow sending bulk emails. They have very strict user policies, and if your recipients mark you as spam, they will suspend your account. 

Thus, you might have noticed that using email clients as email sending platforms can limit your ability to perform email marketing to a huge extent. They don’t allow you to harness the best of email marketing- bulk mailing, automation workflows, personalization, and analytics. 

Now, let us understand the limitations you will face as an email marketer:

Low deliverability and open rates 

These types of free email providers don’t provide bulk mailing. You will be provided with 200-500 daily email sent limits. Moreover, people do not trust messages that come from a free Gmail/Outlook account, unlike the ones from a custom domain, thus increasing your chances of getting marked as ‘spam.’

This ultimately translates to a situation where you can send messages to very few people only to encounter deliverability issues. Moreover, you will not be able to monitor your campaign’s open rate and bounce rate, along with other important metrics.

IP reputation becomes a major challenge

Your IP reputation is the basis of your email marketing campaigns. If you are using Gmail Or Outlook, you are heavily compromising on your sender reputation. Proper tools have provisions for IP warming while using email clients limits your deliverability (which is already limited to 500 contacts.) Not using professional software can make you vulnerable to landing inside the spam folders and, even worse, getting blacklisted. With an ESP tool, you can use shared IP addresses or buy dedicated ones which gives you complete control over this aspect.

You can’t use core Email marketing strategies

If you are looking to send personalized emails to your prospects? It won’t be possible to use free email services as they are not built to manage or customize the contact lists. Personalization and segmentation are two of the most successful email marketing tactics that you might not be able to use with them. Also, you cannot automate your messages. Which means that you can’t run drip campaigns, provide prompt client servicing, or send transactional messages.

You can’t use HTML templates 

Responsive HTML email templates have become a must for projecting your brand, but free email clients don’t support using them. Thus, you can send text-only messages that lack visual appeal, interactivity, rich multimedia, and other benefits of email marketing templates. This also sabotages your brand’s reputation.

(Image Credits)

(Image Credits)

Advantages of using professional Email marketing software

In this section, we will have a look at how using a proper email marketing tool helps you avoid the perils of using the free mailbox providers:

• ESPs are designed to send bulk emails, and they come with drag and drop editors so that you can directly customize free email templates available online or build them from scratch.
• They give your messages a professional touch since you can use custom domains with sender names like “support,” “care,” and “sales”. This is beneficial to your brand image and deliverability, of course.
• You can use core marketing features like personalization, segmentation, and A/B Split testing.
• You can integrate your email marketing tool with third-party apps like CRM and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to enhance your customer support.
• Email automation becomes possible with dedicated martech solutions as you can set up workflows for lead nurturing.
• You get access to enormous analytics datasets that will help you track and assess your marketing efforts. They also help in maintaining mailing list hygiene and calculating customer-specific metrics like average lifetime value and billing amounts.
• You can embed API integration with your emails to display live data inside your messages.

Thus, professional email marketing software empowers you to leverage pretty much everything you can do with emails. This can be largely attributed to the technical control over the channel. This is an aspect every business should pay attention to while making the decision.

Wrap Up

Gmail and Outlook are undoubtedly the best free email service providers that help in our day-to-day life activities. But they have serious limitations which can withhold the success of your email marketing efforts. All while risking the email addresses that you might be used for personal/other business purposes. Instead, using dedicated solutions helps you harness the true potential of email marketing. I hope this article cleared the doubts regarding why you shouldn’t use Gmail/Outlook for your email marketing efforts.