How to send personalized bulk emails within Affinity

Use Affinity to send personalized emails to multiple people at the same time. These bulk emails will still be sent through your email provider (e.g. Gmail or Microsoft Office365/Exchange) and your default email address, as shown on the From field (see below). If you’d like to change your default email address, please reach out to support@affinity.co.

Deliverability is our highest priority, so we have implemented risk-mitigating measures to prevent your email account from being considered spam or reaching the rate limit set by your company or email provider.

• One batch of bulk emails is limited to 200 recipients at a time.
• Only one batch of bulk emails can be sent at a time. Once the current batch is fully processed, feel free to get started with the next batch.

Overview

• When to use the bulk email feature over Affinity's Mailchimp integration
• How to send personalized bulk emails
• How to keep your emails out of spam
• Troubleshooting common bulk email errors

When to use the bulk email feature over Affinity's Mailchimp integration

We highly suggest leveraging the bulk email feature over Affinity's Mailchimp integration if you/your team aligns with the following:

• You only intend to send out emails that contain hyperlinks and attached files/images.
• Your team does not use Mailchimp to begin with.
• Your team does not need to embed images within the email body.
• Your team does not need to create branded emails with customizable layouts.

How to send personalized bulk emails

1. Click into either the All Organizations/All People directories, or any people list, organization list, or opportunity list.
   
   
   
2. Click the checkboxes next to all the people you'd like to bulk-send an email to, then click the Bulk email icon. To bulk-select all people in the view, click the first checkbox, scroll all the way down, then Shift + click the very last checkbox (200 people max).
   
   
   When sending bulk emails within an organization or opportunity list, click the checkboxes next to all the organizations or opportunities for which you’d like to email people. The recipients will be determined by the individuals associated with each opportunity under the default People field (200 people max). Each recipient will receive their own email - if there are multiple individuals associated with a single opportunity, they will not be included together on the same email chain.
   
   
   Note: You will only want to send bulk emails from the organization list only if the organization has a maximum of five people associated with it. If you have an organization list that has more than five people associated with the organization, you want to use the All People directory to bulk email from. To do this, go to the All People directory and search for the organization name, then select the individuals that you want to email. 
   
   Do not remove individuals from the People field in the organization list itself, since it will disassociate those individuals from their organizations entirely, which would have negative consequences across the platform.
   
   
3. Now, click on Recipients to make sure that these are the people you’d like to send individual emails to. You can always add more people within the bulk email feature by clicking on the + Add more recipients search bar. You can also remove contacts by clicking on the x to the right of their name.
   
   Note: Emails will default to a person's primary email address if selected from the list. Users can add recipients with their non-primary emails by looking up user and choosing desired email in the bulk email modal.
   
   
4. Then, click Compose email right below.
5. If you haven’t set up an email signature in Affinity yet, click the ellipsis (3-dotted) icon on the right side. You can insert links, use rich-text formatting, and add your company logo/image (learn more).
6. From here, you can also access and manage your email templates within your Settings.
   
   
   
7. Once you’ve set up your email signature, add up to 10 additional recipients for the CC and BCC lines if needed. These additional recipients will be CC’ed or BCC’ed on each and every email sent out.
   
   Note: Affinity will not surface these emails on the profile pages of the individuals on the BCC line.
   
   
8. Type in an email subject. The email subject will be the same for all emails.
9. To make sure each email is customized for each person, you can use the First Name and/or Last Name token in the email body. To insert one of the tokens, you can click the + icon on the bottom left corner.
   
   
   
10.  Alternatively, you can insert a pre-saved email template if you've already created email templates.
    
    
    
11. Feel free to attach any files that are also relevant. All emails will include the same files.
    • Make sure your files are one of our supported file types within Affinity.
    • For Gmail users, the file size limit is 20MB.
    • For Outlookusers, the file size limit is 3MB.
      
      
      
12. Click Preview all to see what your email would look like from the recipients’ perspective.
    
    
    
13. Click through the arrows to see how each email would differ based on each recipient. You can also click Send me a test email and the test email should appear in your Inbox folder within the minute. None of the people you added to the CC or BCC lines will receive a copy of this test email.
    
    
    Once you receive the test email, go Back to compose for any final edits before sending.
    
    
    
14. If you’re ready to send, toggle on the Track email feature to track open, click, and response rates. Then, click the Send # emails button.
    
    
    
15. To keep your emails out of spam, we will space out their delivery by a few seconds, which may take a few minutes to complete.
    
    
    
16. After a few minutes, these emails should start appearing in your Sent folder.
    
    
    
17. You will also receive both in-product and email notifications once all emails have been sent.
    
    
    
    
    
18. All emails will be tracked within Affinity, so they should also show up on recipients’ profile pages in their Activity Timeline over the next several minutes.

How to keep your emails out of spam

Here are some tips for protecting your email reputation and making sure your emails are successfully delivered to your contacts’ inboxes:

• Do not buy or rent email lists.

• Do not scrape websites for email addresses.

• Do not continue emailing people whom you have received bounce notifications from before.

• Do not use red or white fonts in your email body.

• Do not use ALL CAPS in your email subject line or email body.

• Do not use too many exclamation points within your email!!!

• Do not use video, Flash, or JavaScript within your email.

• Do not use spam trigger words and phishing phrases (e.g. WIN, Free!, LIMITED TIME, etc.).

• Do not forget to use spell check, as spelling mistakes aren’t just unprofessional - they’re actually a spam trigger too.

• Do not write a novel. Too much copy is another red flag for spam filters, so keep your emails short and sweet.

Avoid sending bulk emails to too many people at once. Affinity has set the limit to 200 recipients per batch of bulk emails to protect your reputation, but we don’t set a daily or weekly limit on the number of batches or overall emails sent. Be aware of your email provider’s email-sending limits (Gmail / Outlook), so you don’t get flagged!

Troubleshooting common bulk email errors

Should some of your emails fail, you will receive an email notification from Affinity summarizing what happened and which of your recipients didn’t receive emails. Here are some potential reasons why:

• Your email account may have disabled syncing either before or during the process of your emails being sent out.
  • To re-enable syncing, please follow these steps: How to reenable syncing of data into Affinity
  • Then, go back to the list and send the emails once more to those who failed to receive them the first time.
• Affinity does not have permissions to send emails on your behalf.
  • To grant email permissions, go to affinity.co/auth/reauthorize.
  • Then, go back to the list and send the emails once more to those who failed to receive them at first.
• You have met your email provider’s email-sending limits.
  • Feel free to try sending the bulk email again tomorrow, or contact your IT team to find out whether there have been any limits potentially set by your company.

Should you have any questions, feel free to contact us at support@affinity.co and we’d be happy to help.