What is a group email? (+ 8 tips to get the most out of community discussions) 

For the last two decades, everyone who has worked at a desk has used email daily. It’s a workplace staple and has remained so despite all of the potential alternatives that have gained popularity over the years. 

One of the most useful and yet, often unused, email services is the group email. In this post, we’re going to explain what a group email is, who should be using one, and how you can benefit from them. 

Let’s get started!

What is group email?

First things first, what is group email? Put simply, group email is a type of service that you can use to send emails to large groups. That could be your team of thirty around the office or a subscriber list of thousands. 

Group emails are there for you to use whenever you are regularly emailing the same group of people. You can email multiple people at once with a regular email, of course. But doing so is generally complicated and disorganized, and it can be difficult to sift through replies. 

That’s where group email services like Gaggle excel. These platforms offer features geared towards the group email format. You won’t find most of these features in a standard email client. This makes it incredibly useful for a variety of use cases. 

Who can benefit from group email?

As mentioned, there are a lot of use cases for group email! This makes it a flexible option that plenty of parties can make use of. 

Generally, though, you’ll see group email being used in one of two ways:

  1. Most often, group email is used to manage a large list of subscribers. If you run a routine email newsletter, for instance, you can use a group email to easily keep track of and communicate with your subscribers. 

  2. Another common situation is using group email to communicate with a team. That could be your team at work, an after-school club, or a means of communicating with others in your neighborhood. 

8 tips to get the most out of your community discussion

Alright, now that we know what group email is and have an idea of who should be using one, it’s time to talk tips. 

Below are some of Gaggle’s favorite tips for fostering community discussion over a group email. These tips will range from technical to conversational, so read through each one!

1. You only have to know one email to email a group

One of the key reasons that group email helps build community discussion is that you as well as everyone in your group only needs to know one email. 

For those signing up for your group, this makes it easy because they can quickly sign up for and keep track of the emails being sent to this group. 

And it makes it easy for you because you only need to remember that same email address! 

2. Protect your digital privacy

Another feature of group email is that it preserves your digital privacy. Unlike instant messaging platforms, what you send in the email group stays in the email group. 

Not to mention that you own your content when you use group email. Instant messaging apps have a lot of control over the messages you send. Sticking to email means ensuring peace of mind for your group’s privacy. 

3. You can archive group emails

A key (though surprisingly unknown) feature of email is that you can archive it. You can download emails in bulk as a file on your computer. These can be saved in the cloud, or you can make copies of them on different drives, and use other methods of preservation so that you can keep a record of those emails. 

Although not specific to group email (this is a feature of all email services), it is a key benefit to communities who need to communicate.

It’s an easy way to preserve and search through old conversations so you never lose anything, so make sure to use it!

4. Your community already uses email — so use it!

Another great way to get the most out of your community discussion is to pick a channel of communication that everyone already has. And while some of your team/community members might have Facebook, others Slack, and another group Snapchat, everyone in your group has email. 

The ubiquity of email makes it incredibly useful for communicating with a large number of people. Group email is not only great at organizing communication between a large community but ensuring that everyone can participate too. 

5. Take control of your email lists with group email

By now, you should be able to see that email is an ideal way to communicate with your community. But the bigger your community is, the harder it is to control your email lists. 

Group email can be helpful here! It has a ton of specific features in place to help you manage your email list. You won’t find features like this with standard email, so group email is the way to go!

6. Ensure that emails arrive (or stop arriving)

Group email platforms give you visibility into whether or not your emails are reaching your community. You can prevent emails from ending up in spam boxes, see if an email didn’t reach the person it was intended for, and more. 

On the other side of things, group emails are easy to opt-out of! If members of your community decide to stop participating in your group email or they leave your community, group email platforms make it easy for them to unsubscribe from future emails. 

7. Be transparent with your community

Whether you’re messaging your team, community, or customers, transparency is key. By using group email, you can ensure a high degree of transparency. Everything you send is visible to all of your subscribers, so everyone knows just as much as everyone else. 

8. You can choose between different providers for an optimized solution

By far the best way to manage communications between several email users is a group email service. 

Group email services are not only a useful alternative, but they’re useful because there are alternatives. You can pick and choose between them to find one that exactly matches your needs. A great place to start is Gaggle Mail. Click here to see what we have to offer.