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General discussion

bulk emails in outlook 2000

Aug 27, 2005 10:26PM PDT

I've been trying to find a way of keeping members of a mailing list up to date on events I put on regularly (they all asked to join so no spamming involved)

This was easy in the beginning when there were only a hundred or so but the list has grown to about 2,000.

I've looked at commercial mailing list management software but the ones I've seen are limited to using a very plain format or are so expensive I just can't afford them. I had understood that there was a limit on the number of recipients a message could be BCC'd to but a few months back I received an email via another mailing list which I'd joined. The sender had mistakenly CC'd their entire mailing list of over 1,000 names. Leaving aside the fact this was rather irritating; I wondered how this was possible so I replied asking them what programme they were using as it is exactly what I'm looking for.

They eventually emailed back and just said they used Outlook. I hadn't realised this could be done with Outlook, I did ask them how they did it but have been waiting a long time for a response so thought I'd ask all you knowledgeable people here.

What are the restrictions on the number of recipients to an email using Outlook? Was it the fact they CC'd instead of BCC'd?

I'm using XP home and have an ADSL connection.

One other question. I am often told by people I have sent bulk emails to that they haven't received them. I suspect these are Hotmail users and the message goes straight to their junk folders. Is there any way of resolving this? a lot of people just don't bother checking their junk folders. Is there some programme out their which will email each address on a list individually?

Cheers

Mo

Discussion is locked

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Re: mass mailing
Aug 27, 2005 11:26PM PDT

I once wrote an application in MS Access that used Outlook to send individual emails to some 600 people from the database. Luckily, I had an example that only needed adaptations within my knowledge. The documentation on microsoft's site was very useful also.
So if you're in to some VBA programming yourself, I could give a few hints.

Kees

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sounds interesting
Aug 28, 2005 12:58AM PDT

but I don't know anything about VBA programming, I'll add it to the ever growing list of things to learn up on.I'm struggling through Photoshop at the moment though and I have limited head space to spare for a while.

Meanwhile, I just googled up something called "Mail list King" which works with outlook and claims to do everything I want.It's cheap too, or free with restrictions if unregistered but if you pay for it it does something called multi-threading and uses its own SMPT.

I'm not asking for a revue of this specific programme or anything but would you say it's worth paying for stuff like this or would I be chucking money down the drain?

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Re: Mail list King
Aug 28, 2005 4:06AM PDT

MO FO,

Multi-threading is only some technology inside the product, you can roughly translate it as "faster". And many ISP's prohibit the use of your own SMTP (roughly: post office) because it's typically something a spammer does.

It won't harm to try the free version, of course. Before paying, however, contact your ISP.

Kees

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In short...
Aug 28, 2005 12:07AM PDT

Another new ISP spam fighting tool is to silently drop emails with large numbers of recipients. Since these are 99.99% of the time SPAM I think this a grand idea. You may not think so highly of what is going on to combat SPAM since it will affect your efforts.

Even if Outlook can do a few thousand emails on BCC, you'll run into ISP email filters now or soon.

Best of luck,

Bob