google mail

[Availor]

I haven't found anything about that, so I've decided to ask this in the forum:
How many people can I send mail to at once? I have about 3000 people in my newsletter database. I want to use gmail as my newsletter program because this way I can send invitation about events and documents I publish.

Anyone has an answer to that?

Thanks,

Availor.

[steve.ledger]

Google/Gmail operates under the guidelines of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Might be worthwhile reading this.

[Availor]

Thanks for the info, but I haven't found the maximum number of reciepients I can send mail to. If I want to send an e-mail to 3000 clients is it possible providing the necessary details?

[RTK]

I'm not sure... but I doubt you will be able to email 3000 people because it would open up avenues of incredible abuse.

However, an easy way manage a lot of people is http://groups.google.com/ There is no limit there. The drawback? They would have to re-register with the group you set-up (might not be feasible).

The bonus? Other people using Googe Groups might stumble on your stuff... If you can get all 3000 people to sign-up - you would be kicking some serious butt, Availor.

It might not work for what you want to do, but why not check it out?

Risto

[steve.ledger]

I think the point is, that sending the same news letter to 3000 recipients in one hit will likely be regarded as spam. Remember that the Anti-Spam laws in your country are different to those in the US. It's the US laws that count because you are using a US based service.

In any case Availor, you can setup your Gmail account as POP, and use a regular email client (I use Foxmail and Opera M2).
Sending out the same newsletter to everyone in your address book then becomes quite easy.

[RTK]

One more thing... Don't be tempted to use a free hosted mailing list service... Many are just nets to collect emails for spam. You don't want to piss your people off... Having 3000 subscribers has real value.

Risto

[RTK]

One more thing... You could also use FeedBurner (email notifications) to communicate with your subscribers. However, (as the name implies) it uses your RSS feed, and sends out the latest additions when it's updated (daily or as it happens).

Sledger, wouldn't you manually have to managee opt-ins and opt-outs when using POP? It could be a lot of work with 1000s of subscribers.

Risto

[steve.ledger]

Assuming the 3000 recipients of Availors News Letter are 'subscribers', no.

[remi]

Hi Availor,

some webhoster don't allow to send 3,000 mails in one hour. It sounds silly, but it costs a lot of server resources, to send such masses of emails.

Another problem is, that no other recipient should see the email address of other recipients (protection of privacy). Often you'll find the tip, that you should insert the email address into the "BCC" field, in order to send them "invisible", but the consequence is, that your mails are tagged as spam by some spam-filters.

So, what you need is phplist. It's an open-source newsletter-manager with the great feature, to send masses of personalized emails bit by bit.

see also:

• Setting the Send Speed (Rate)

Regards,
Remi

[Availor]

Thanks for the replies - I know phplist but it requires importing settings which do not work well with hebrew.

I have 3500 students in my college, and I already have mailing system which totally sucks - I can't even send pictures and it has lots of bugs (big companies like the one that gives service to my college just can't handle simple tasks because of all the bureaucracy).

Anyway, I found out that I can do something myself, for free, better than a company that will do it for 2000$ and worse. The problem is - because it's very buggy, I cannot export the mail addresses from that system to a different one so I sent everyone mail asking them to fill out a form I created using google documents (excel sheet - very useful). So there I have I another address book with 3000 students registered. now I can export it as xls or csv and import in a different mailing program.

Because I use google calendar and google documents I thought it would be easier to use gmail as my mailing platform because when I create a form I can invite people to fill it out directly from their mail - something that is not possible in other programs. Same goes if I have an important even - I can just sent invitations from google calendar, it's very easy. I've managed to send mail to 140 people in my address book, but I haven't tried more than that.