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HOWTO: Email a Large Number of People
I answered a question about how to send an email to a large number of people. As individuals, we occasionally want to send out an email to a bunch of friends. Hopefully, we're all aware that email etiquette says that we should not list everyone's name in the To list.
So, how do we do it?
In part, your solution depends on your scale and intent. Let's consider it from both the personal email and the business email perspectives.
If you have a paid web hosting account, you can probably set up and use the mailing program Dada Mail (free, http://mojo.skazat.com/). Dada Mail works with a list of addressees, but each email is sent individually to each addressee.
I tried the free version for a while for my Terry's Computer Tips newsletter. Then, I switched to its Paid version called Pro Dada (the paid version is the same program). I used Dada Mail and Pro Dada for over a year. They were pretty good and had an interface where people could sign up and could unsubscribe.
I had two types of problems using Dada Mail.
First, I got a lot of bounce messages (account closed, mailbox full, etc). In other words, basic administration work to maintain the subscriber list.
Second, I found that other people using the same mail server could send spam and that would affect my legitimate emails. If their spam got reported to one of the RealtimeBlackList (RBL) systems, then mail servers that used the RBLs would block any other emails from that mail server. Some ISPs will block emails for 2 or 3 hours. Others will block them for 2 or 3 days. I had several episodes of "your email was blocked because your mailserver is listed in the RBL list" before I gave up on Dada.
However, the final straw what when my web host was bought by another company, who implemented a "maximum 200 outgoing emails per hour" limitation without warning.
I switched to the mailing list service Aweber for mailing of my newsletters. I had been considering it for a long time, but kept putting off the change, since each subscriber would have to respond to another "yes, I really want to subscribe email" in order to stay subscribed. I only wish I had done it earlier...
I've been extremely happy with the service from Aweber.
Another automated-type way to send a lot of emails is by using one of the add-on programs for Microsoft Outlook. But, if you do bulk emails via your ISP, you may get in trouble with your ISP over mass-mailing. Cox.net, for example, permits mass emailing only by their business accounts and only after the business has filled out a mass-email application and been approved.
You can Google for "mailing list program" without the quotes and check out a few options, if you want to go this route.
The easiest way — if you only have a few addressees — is to address the email to yourself and then BCC all your intended recipients.
ISPs usually have a limit on the number of recipients for an email and will bounce — or drop — the emails that attempt to go to too many addresses. Be sure to enter yourself as the To addressee — many spam filters will trigger on a "blank To" field and decide the email is spam.
If you're interested in the Aweber option, you can give it a free test drive at http://terryscomputertips.com/Aweber
Copyright © 2007-2008 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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