Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

In an effort to cut mailing costs, the state chapter of the professional
society that I belong to (www.asce.org) is looking at converting our monthly
newsletter to an electronic format. Our intent is to create a .pdf of the
document (usually 4-8 pages long), post a copy of it on our society's web
site and send an e-mail to our members (only) notifying them of the
newsletter.

We've got approximately 2000 e-mail addresses in our state database which
gets updated regularly by our national headquarters. I'm looking for ideas
on a good cost-effective method to send out the 2000 monthly notices --
without having my ISP mark me as a spammer and without having spam filters on
the receiving end of things think that the incoming message is spam.

What sort of low-cost commercial bulk e-mail options are there? I'd guess
that 2000 messages once a month is a rather low-volume application.

Topica is an idea, but the one-time set-up of $200 plus $50 a month fees kind
of negates some of the savings we are hoping to achieve by converting to al
electronic newsletter. MS List Builder seems like another option at $300 per
year. However I am not familiar with these products and don't know if they
are overkill for what we intend to do.
One other thing to keep in mind is that our professional society rotates
through newsletter editors about once a year, so we need a product that is
able to maintain some continuity over the years even though the editors are
changing.

Here are some other options:

Work e-mail: My employer supports my involvement in the professional
society, so I could use my work address to send the messages. I could either
blind cc the recipients in the message, or use a mail merge program to
generate individual messages for each member. I like the idea of individual
messages since will reduce the likelihood that the message gets tagged as
spam. However, I don't want my employer's e-mail account to get labeled as a
spammer for these messages, and I don't like that my work e-mail puts a
standard disclaimer ("This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are
confidential and ... ") at the end of each message.

Home e-mail: My home e-mail account (Road Runner) limits the number of
addresses in a message to a small amount - something like 50 or so. I could
send out blocks of messages with the addresses blind cc'd, but that would
take 40 separate messages which would need to be sent. Limitations on my
e-mail set-up at home (MS Outlook, Windows XP and Norton) makes it very
difficult to send individual messages to each person using some sort of mail
merge -- since my e-mail program will stop and ask for confirmation for each
outgoing message - 2000 in all!

--
Mark

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

> What sort of low-cost commercial bulk e-mail options are there? I'd
> guess that 2000 messages once a month is a rather low-volume
> application.

I use a custom built solution myself, but there are a few options that
come to mind immediately. One is google groups. I think it can handle
subscriptions of just email addresses (without requiring a google
account). Last time I tried it, was buggy as hell though so try it out
with a few addresses first.

If you're going to run your own mailing list, you will need to rent a
UNIX mail server (Linux or FreeBSD hosting can cost you as little as $15
a month). This is the most proper way to do this. Free software for
running a mailing list, assuming you or someone at your organization has
the skills to set it uP:

http://listproc.sourceforge.net/
http://www.list.org/
http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/

As for how not to get mistaken for a spammer:

1. Don't spam
2. Require (unforgeable) subscriptions from all members
3. Keep records as proof of user subscription
4. Immediately honour all unsubscribe requests
5. Don't violate your ISPs terms of service

For example, your home internet connection might not permit sending
the mailings through that connection. This is why I suggest renting a
real mail server.

All of this is somewhat complicated to do and I highly recommend you hire
a UNIX expert to help out with the task.

--
Jem Berkes
Windows, UNIX software and system design
http://www.pc-tools.net/

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

"Mark Mathu" wrote in message
news:cs2gce02q88@enews4.newsguy.com...
>
>
> What sort of low-cost commercial bulk e-mail options are there? I'd guess
> that 2000 messages once a month is a rather low-volume application.
>
> Topica is an idea, but the one-time set-up of $200 plus $50 a month fees
kind
> of negates some of the savings we are hoping to achieve by converting to
al
> electronic newsletter.

Topica is also widely blocked by various spam block lists.
Why not just install a program on your web server?
http://www.siteinteractive.com/ for Subscribe Me. Or Subscribe Me Lite
(Free)
Once installed all you need do is upload a .txt file of your address list
then paste your HTML format message into a form online. A few of my clients
use the Lite version and like it very much.

--
McWebber
No email replies read
If someone tells you to forward an email to all your friends
please forget that I'm your friend.

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

Mark Mathu wrote:
> In an effort to cut mailing costs, the state chapter of the professional
> society that I belong to (www.asce.org) is looking at converting our monthly
> newsletter to an electronic format. Our intent is to create a .pdf of the
> document (usually 4-8 pages long), post a copy of it on our society's web
> site and send an e-mail to our members (only) notifying them of the
> newsletter.

being a member of a few professional societies, I get emails from
them, some more often, some less - and all with an address to contact
to unsubscribe in each mailing.

> We've got approximately 2000 e-mail addresses in our state database which
> gets updated regularly by our national headquarters. I'm looking for ideas
> on a good cost-effective method to send out the 2000 monthly notices --
> without having my ISP mark me as a spammer and without having spam filters on
> the receiving end of things think that the incoming message is spam.
>
> What sort of low-cost commercial bulk e-mail options are there? I'd guess
> that 2000 messages once a month is a rather low-volume application.

why commercial?
Why not something like listserv or majordomo?
>
> Here are some other options:
>
> Work e-mail: My employer supports my involvement in the professional
> society, so I could use my work address to send the messages.

see above. We have some not directly work related mailing lists where
I work, including some perl development related ones and one to do
with after work soccer.

> or use a mail merge program to
> generate individual messages for each member.

that's where I'd think it borders on spam.

> I like the idea of individual
> messages since will reduce the likelihood that the message gets tagged as
> spam.

Nope. Create yourself a legit mailing list with a legit (systemy, not
"commercial") mailing list program.

Have a look at the newsgroup sci.astro.fits. It doesn't say "moderated"
in its title, but it is - and it is mailed out to those who subscribe
to it - by the moderator. I'm one of the subscribers.

> ... and I don't like that my work e-mail puts a
> standard disclaimer ("This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are
> confidential and ... ") at the end of each message.

if you're mailing to a professional society it members should have come
across statements like that before.

> Home e-mail: My home e-mail account (Road Runner) limits the number of
> addresses in a message to a small amount - something like 50 or so. I could
> send out blocks of messages with the addresses blind cc'd, but that would
> take 40 separate messages which would need to be sent. Limitations on my
> e-mail set-up at home (MS Outlook, Windows XP and Norton) makes it very
> difficult to send individual messages to each person using some sort of mail
> merge -- since my e-mail program will stop and ask for confirmation for each
> outgoing message - 2000 in all!

I'd forget that "option"

If you have a member who is faculty or staff at a local college they may
(should!) be able to set up something like this for you.


Maren
(member of AAS, ACM, IEEE, and a few other mailing lists that have
nothing to do with these societies)

------------------------------------------------------------ -------------
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~maren/palms_etc/
specializing in Gardenia Taitensis seeds and Job's Tears in bulk

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

Maren Purves wrote in
news:cs4h5m01ldj@enews3.newsguy.com:

>> or use a mail merge program to
>> generate individual messages for each member.
>
> that's where I'd think it borders on spam.

I don't think this is what makes something spam or not. The term spam
generally means Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE). Email is spam if it is both
unsolicited AND bulk.

Unsolicited: no permission to send, not requested by recipient.
Bulk: same message (whether or not personalized) sent to many

Essential things you must do as the sender:
- make sure you have permission to send your mailing
- keep subscribe/unsubscribe power in recipient's hands
(the recipient consents or revokes consent)

I would recommend, as a trustworthy resource on this:
http://www.spamhaus.org/definition.html

--
Jem Berkes
Windows, UNIX software and system design
http://www.pc-tools.net/

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

Yahoo groups is another mechanism that some groups I am involved with use
with great success for this specific purpose. One advantage is that the
opt-out functionality is already built there and works well.

--
Andrew Butchart
andrew@floatingbear.ca


"Jem Berkes" wrote in message
news:cs3nj402g4e@enews1.newsguy.com...
>
> > What sort of low-cost commercial bulk e-mail options are there? I'd
> > guess that 2000 messages once a month is a rather low-volume
> > application.
>
> I use a custom built solution myself, but there are a few options that
> come to mind immediately. One is google groups. I think it can handle
> subscriptions of just email addresses (without requiring a google
> account). Last time I tried it, was buggy as hell though so try it out
> with a few addresses first.
>
> If you're going to run your own mailing list, you will need to rent a
> UNIX mail server (Linux or FreeBSD hosting can cost you as little as $15
> a month). This is the most proper way to do this. Free software for
> running a mailing list, assuming you or someone at your organization has
> the skills to set it uP:
>
> http://listproc.sourceforge.net/
> http://www.list.org/
> http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/
>
> As for how not to get mistaken for a spammer:
>
> 1. Don't spam
> 2. Require (unforgeable) subscriptions from all members
> 3. Keep records as proof of user subscription
> 4. Immediately honour all unsubscribe requests
> 5. Don't violate your ISPs terms of service
>
> For example, your home internet connection might not permit sending
> the mailings through that connection. This is why I suggest renting a
> real mail server.
>
> All of this is somewhat complicated to do and I highly recommend you hire
> a UNIX expert to help out with the task.
>
> --
> Jem Berkes
> Windows, UNIX software and system design
> http://www.pc-tools.net/
>

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

"Mark Mathu" wrote in message
news:cs2gce02q88@enews4.newsguy.com...

> We've got approximately 2000 e-mail addresses in our state database which
> gets updated regularly by our national headquarters. I'm looking for
> ideas
> on a good cost-effective method to send out the 2000 monthly notices --
> without having my ISP mark me as a spammer and without having spam filters
> on
> the receiving end of things think that the incoming message is spam.

First, talk to your ISP and let them know what's going on. If you can find
somebody who can create a simple MS Access database you could probably have
a system up and running in less than an hour. You could have the program
space out the emails, too, so they don't go out all at once.

Two-thousand emails doesn't sound like a lot. I would think that, even by
hand, this could get done in an evening or two. Worse case, try sending out
a hundred emails and see if you can come up with a systematic way of doing
it.

Oh, check out Yahoo Groups. That's a pretty good way to keep people
up-to-date, and it gives you a discussion forum and all kinds of things. Its
free to you, but yahoo tags on ads. Check it out, at least. The ads aren't
too bad.

Mike

Re: Bulk e-mail program for newsletter

[posted and mailed]

See my comments interspersed through out.

"Mark Mathu" wrote in
news:cs2gce02q88@enews4.newsguy.com:

> In an effort to cut mailing costs, the state chapter of the
> professional society that I belong to (www.asce.org) is looking at
> converting our monthly newsletter to an electronic format. Our intent
> is to create a .pdf of the document (usually 4-8 pages long), post a
> copy of it on our society's web site and send an e-mail to our members
> (only) notifying them of the newsletter.

A professional organization (if it has any money) *should* be offering
it's state-level chapters certain benefits. One such benefit is to mass
e-mail (e-blast) the chapter's newsletters for them. Given the work load,
I would then presume the national organization's IT department to have
installed the application necessary to perform the e-blast, and the
permissions necessary to not piss anybody off.


> We've got approximately 2000 e-mail addresses in our state database
> which gets updated regularly by our national headquarters. I'm
> looking for ideas on a good cost-effective method to send out the 2000
> monthly notices -- without having my ISP mark me as a spammer and
> without having spam filters on the receiving end of things think that
> the incoming message is spam.

Can't do much about the rogue recipient (member, business contact)
ignorantly clicking the "This is SPAM" button and causing a few others to
have their copy of the newsletter interrupted. I e-blast for two
professional associations, each having about 1500 addresses.

At one time, one of these associations was using Constant Contact
(www.constantcontact.com) as their bulk e-mail, subscribe/unsubscribe
mechanism. Nothing against CC ($30/month for your database of 2000), but
we decided to bring as much as possible in-house.

As such, we use Gammadyne Mailer (www.gammadyne.com) which solves all of
our e-blast needs: scheduling, throttling, custom fields (if/then
programming, etc), and bounce notice processing. We use the membership
Access database as the source of the addresses.


> What sort of low-cost commercial bulk e-mail options are there? I'd
> guess that 2000 messages once a month is a rather low-volume
> application.

According to the entities I've had to have a dialog with, yes, 2000 a
month is small potatoes. I had to purchase a SOHO Static DSL line (and am
in the process of getting the DNS PTR record updated to reflect our
domain name - I'll explain that in a minute), our provider is Earthlink.
Seeing as how it is a SOHO-class account, they expect a butt-load of
outgoing communication (3Mb down, 768Kb up). However, they adamantly
refuse to permit us to run our own e-mail server. I don't want to run our
own e-mail server anyway. (They did hint at a full business-class account
with multiple static IP addresses being able to run an in-house e-mail
server, but they also hinted that such an arrangement is subject to
draconian scrutiny.)


> One other thing to keep in mind is that our professional society
> rotates through newsletter editors about once a year, so we need a
> product that is able to maintain some continuity over the years even
> though the editors are changing.

I haven't read the Gammadyne EULA recently, but if you pass oround the
computer that the application is installed on and register it under the
association's name, I can't see how you would have any problems when it
comes time to switch editors.


> Work e-mail:

Nuhh... I'd stay away from that option.

> Home e-mail:

Setting the throttle on Gammadyne (for example) to four messages in a
group with a thirty second delay between each group is enough to keep
Earthlink happy. What you *really* have to watch out for is AOL and the
various domains that feed through their servers: netscape.com, cs.com,
and a couple others. AOL is *DAMN* tight-assed about blocking floods. I
have Gannadyne set to send only one AOL e-mail every five minutes. The
combined throttling means it takes my list of 1500 addresses about 24
hours to send. But that's OK for us.

Now, the PostMaster at AOL (http://postmaster.aol.com) has what's called
the AOL White-list. If you follow a few simple rules, you can be granted
White-list status and be able to e-blast to AOL unthrottled. A few of the
conditions are: *no* dynamically assigned IP address from the sender
(must be static and the PTR record *must* show the company's domain name
so that when a Reverse DNS Lookup is performed, *your* domain name -
asce.org - is returned), your e-mail must have opt-out provisions
(doesn't have to be automatic, a simple working e-mail address, phone
number, or physical address to send opt-out requests to will suffice),
full contact information, and meticulous record-keeping.

In your case, your list is generated by your parent organization and is,
by definition, opt-in because all addresses are member's addresses. Any
addresses acquired through a business-type enquiry of existing business
relationship *must* be so indicated in the e-mail.

You must update your address list *in a timely manner* when processing
bounce notices and opt-out requests. You must send at least 200 messages
(not 200 sessions of an e-blast) a month to AOL to remian on their White-
List.

Essentially, AOL requires you to adhere to *their* interpretation of the
CAN-SPAM Act. Otherwise, it's one AOL message every five minutes.

Note also that this is for *all* e-mails originating at a distinct IP
address. When we are e-blasting during the business day, I have to add
extra minutes because we are also communicating *continuously* with our
Board of Directors by e-mail - several of which have AOL addresses. (A
few times, I didn't and my boss's e-mails to the association's President
were getting bounced too. When I was asked for a solution, I told him to
dump AOL.)

I hope I have given you some food for thought. Feel free to contact me
personally if you have any further questions about your specific
situation.

--
Remove INVALID from e-mail address.

Brian Smither
Smither Consulting