Mailing List Management Software

Once you have determined your goals, your publishing strategy, your newsletter content and design, it's time to consider how you are going to manage your list and deliver your messages.

Desktop Software:

If you're on a very tight budget, you could use Outlook/Outlook Express to send mail to a small list, however you will have to process subscribe & unsubscribe requests manually.

Do you have plenty of patience? Once you get above 100 subscribers, manual subscribe and unsubscribe processing becomes a real chore and takes up more and more of your time.

There are a number of other disadvantages and potential pitfalls for users of desktop software:

By using software on your own PC, you will be sending large numbers of email messages through your internet service provider (ISP). Many ISP's do not allow the sending of email to multiple recipients (to prevent spam) and will automatically delete the messages from their server. The cut-off number used by some ISP's can be set as low as 15 recipients!

If you use the To: or CC: (carbon copy) fields for sending the same message to multiple recipients, ALL your recipients see ALL the other recipients email addresses. In addition, replies and bounced mail will be sent to ALL recipients on your list. This is one of the fastest ways to annoy and lose customers/subscribers.

(BCC: - blind carbon copy - is the only way to hide multiple recipients in a standard email programme.)

If you use To:, CC:, or BCC: to send multiple emails, should you get disconnected from your internet connection, or if your computer crashes during mailing, you will not know who has received your message and who has not. This leaves you two options: resend (some users will get duplicates), or don't resend (some users will not receive your message).

If you have a large list, should a user be unknown (invalid email address), returned mail will consume bandwidth and tie up your mail server.

And last, but by no means least, you must remember to keep your virus scan software up to date - your customers will not thank you if you infect their computer with a virus!

I highly recommend that you automate as much as possible from the start - you'll save hours of your time and countless headaches if you do. For this, you'll need to use server-side mailing list software.

Server-side software:

List hosting software is where the management of your email list is handled by software held on an internet server. In addition to handling all subscribe/unsubscribe requests and bounced mail processing, the software also handles delivery of your email message to your subscriber list.

You can choose to license software and run it on your own server, or you can choose to outsource your list management by using an Application Service Provider (ASP).

Running your own mailing list management and email delivery service is not easy. However, if you have the technical resources in-house, you may wish to consider running list hosting software on your own server. But be aware that there is far more to running a successful mailing list and email delivery service than sticking some cheap email software on your server.

I highly recommend using a hosted or managed email marketing solution, where the provider is responsible for the technical details of running and maintaining the email server. Yes, you'll end up paying ongoing monthly service fees, but you'll save yourself so much time and heartache that it will be worth every penny!

Next section: Tracking your emails

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