What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-06-2006 5:16 PM

Interplastgeek

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Joined on 09-14-2005

I'm helping my bike maintenance co-op with some of their communications issues, and they want a way to send text only email newsletters to their members. In the email they want an easy way for people to unsbuscribe. They'd also like a way to keep track of their members, to see whose membership has expired and whose is about to expire. I've heard good things about Google groups, but is there anything else out there? Preferably something open-source and easy...

Thanks,
Seth

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-10-2006 2:05 PM

Mara78

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Joined on 12-19-2005

TechSoup Member

Hi Seth,

You could try DemocracyInAction.org ( my place of employment)--you'll get email blasting, reporting, easy unsubscribes and membership tracking. Here's our price list in case this sounds up your alley

http://www.democracyinaction.org/www/prices.jsp

Thanks,
Mara

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-11-2006 7:46 AM

jacku

Top 100 Contributor

Joined on 05-04-2006

If you have a domain and/or website hosting you may want to talk to your hosting provider. See if they support the use of Mailman or similar mailing list managers. Mailman is nice because it has a web-based maintenance option and defaults to adding the links to the maintenance interface to the bottom of all messages. (Or at least it used to)

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-13-2006 3:41 PM

overlord

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Joined on 10-13-2006

TechSoup Member

There is also yahoo groups but you would have to have the members subscribe.

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-25-2006 4:27 PM

kllygrv70

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Joined on 10-25-2006

TechSoup Member

I would recommend a program called Constant Contact. Here is the website: http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp
There is a 60 day free trial to check it out. Good luck in your mailing.

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-25-2006 7:17 PM

theCoup

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Joined on 10-25-2006

TechSoup Member

You can send from your computer using software called Group Mail. Keeps things fairly simple. http://www.group-mail.com

Campaign Monitor is very well put together online service that allows you to pay as you send, which is great for smaller lists and sending less often. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/

You can search other resources I've bookmarked at: http://theCoup.org/bookmarks

good luck!

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

10-26-2006 12:14 AM

tarmac

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Joined on 10-26-2006

TechSoup Member

Try Freelists.org. It's free, technology-oriented, reliable, easy to use, has numerous config options (including one-way newsletters, if that is what you want), has no ads anywhere, and is generally excellent in every way. I have managed a freelists mailing list with 400 members, average 50 posts per week, for five years without the slightest problem. It won't track membership expiry dates though.

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

11-27-2006 8:38 AM

ANC_Matt

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Joined on 04-12-2006

TechSoup Member

Also, don't forgetGroundspring'semail now system. It's $20 a month, but has a ton of great features.

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

11-28-2006 8:05 AM

Sasha

Top 25 Contributor

Joined on 07-18-2003

I like Constant Contact, too, as mentioned above but it is not a good way IMO to send text email. It is specifically set up to make sending html newsletters easier, by means of an online wizard. People can opt-in to receive the mailings in either html or text format, but the text format is a 'translation' of the html newsletter.

Best wishes,

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

11-28-2006 4:53 PM

Christian_SEO

Top 10 Contributor

Joined on 02-26-2002

If your coop has a hosting account, then they may already have something included with their hosting account.

If not I reccomend PHP List or Mailman as suggested above. Both are open source and provide everything you should need. Mailman can be a little tricky to configure and not easy for a complete beginner. But when it's set up there should be very little maintenance required since people can subscribe and unsubscribe on their own.

PHPList also provides for HTML emails, but I don't think there is any problem just sending text email. It too can take some effort with all the configuration options, but should also not need much work after it's ready to go. I think PHPList is a little friendier to work with for end users.

Another option for those with smaller lists might be NewsMerge. This is a program that runs on your PC and not a web server and it's also free. The configuration is very simple and it sends text and HTML emails with little consideration on the part of the enduser. The main points to know about NewsMerge are this:

-The program runs on your PC, not a server.
-The program uses a standard POP3 email account to manage subscriptions.
-The program does not have to run all the time, only when you want to check for subscribe/unsubscribe requests or do a mailing.
- You can import CSV files or your Outlook address book.

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

11-28-2006 4:57 PM

Susan_Tenby

Top 10 Contributor

Joined on 01-04-2001

There is also Mail Man, available for free download on TechSoup.

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RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

01-08-2007 1:47 AM

MargaretBartley

Top 200 Contributor

Joined on 08-08-2006

TechSoup Member

I personally don't like to outsource my newsletters. I've found that the amount of manual work is very small, acutally. I send out a newsletter to about 470 people once or twice a month, and I typically get maybe 2 or 3 notices to subscribe, unsubscribe, or invalid addresses each time. It's not much, and I keep it myself.

I keep it in an Access database, which is where I keep the member information.

If you don't like or know how to use Access, you could use an Excel spread sheet.

Then, just use Word MailMerge. It's automatic, and takes almost no time.

I worked with a business that used a service provider, and it was a PITA to download the addresses, update our local database with the new information, use their funky web interface to query their server, which had our information on it.

Plus, I just don't like having who-knows-who owning our mailing list. These internet companies come and go, and not only do you not know who they are, but you don't know who is goign to buy them up next month.

I found the overhead of using a web interface too difficult and time consuming. Literally, I think I spend about five minutes a month doing more than just typing the newsletter itself.

The MailMerge is automated, once it is set up, and takes almost no time.

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Re: RE: What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?

04-09-2009 11:06 AM

rosenatale

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Joined on 04-09-2009

TechSoup Member

Hi. This sounds good, but did you have to send the emails out in increments of 99 or 100 to avoid anti-spam laws?

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What's the best way to send a text email newsletter to 500 people?