How is email sequences different from bulk emailing?

Hi Maryanne, good question. Both features allow you to scale up your email communications. The difference lies in a couple of attributes:

1. Who receives the email: with Bulk Emails, you need to select exactly which contacts will receive the email. With Email Sequences, you don’t need to have an exact list; you can simply define which criteria a contact must meet to receive the email. For example, you set it up so an email is sent automatically whenever you add a certain tag to a Person.
2. How many emails: a Bulk Email can only send a single email to each recipient, whereas with Sequences you can set up a sequence of emails. For example, you can have a follow-up email that send only if the recipient doesn’t respond to the first email within 48 hours.
3. What the emails look like: with Bulk Emails the emails will look very personal, like they were typed up in Gmail. You can achieve the same look with Email Sequences, but you’ll also have options to add formatting, images, buttons, custom HTML and a wider range of merge fields.

Essentially, Bulk Emails are a great for sending one-off emails to a specific group of contacts. Email Sequences are great for automating communications that need to happen regularly and to a dynamic set of contacts. Check out our Email Sequences inspiration thread for more ideas.

Note that Bulk Emails are available of the Professional and Business tiers, whereas Email Sequences is only available to Business subscriptions.

Also, I only touched on the core email functions here, but the Email Sequences feature also enables you to track web visitors, do automated lead scoring, and create contact segments.

Click here to read more about Bulk Emails and click here to read more about Email Sequences.

Hope that helps!