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Creating Bulk E-mail
October 6, 2008

As much as I loathe junk mail, I have to make it – or something like it – sometimes.

I manage five web sites for non-profit organizations, and two for myself, and occasionally one of the groups will ask me to send a newsletter or an announcement to their patrons.

It’s important to differentiate requested e-mails from junk mail. The latter is an e-mail “blast” that goes to a group of individuals who have “opted-in” to a group or a company. In other words they have asked to be included. I have opted-in many times; I get newsletters from McFeeley’s Square-Drive Screws for example (it’s a great catalog for woodworkers). Unwanted e-mails are junk or spam, and I detest those.

So, the fine line between junk and wanted e-mails is established. Now... how do you make the good kind? Printing companies, design firms, anyone involved in modern communication should be using e-mail to stay in touch with their customers. It’s part of our modern world, and we need to be involved.

I have found a number of software products for doing mass e-mails, and have had great success with one called MaxBulk Mailer. It’s a Mac or Windows program that costs $60.00. The program allows you to build e-mail documents in HTML code, and then send them to a list of recipients from a database. MaxBulk Mailer will help you create a file from a template, or you can build your code in a separate program (I use Dreamweaver or hand-code the HTML in a text editor) and paste it in. Unlike other bulk e-mail programs, MaxBulk Mailer is a one-time purchase; you don’t pay-as-you-go as some other programs require.

Among its features are a filter to check your document against known spam characteristics, a filter to remove duplicate addresses from your list, and the ability to personalize the e-mail with numerous fields of information. You can personalize the salutation and add specific information from your database. I usually use the recipient’s name at the top of my e-mailed newsletters, and then put at the bottom a confirmation of the addressee’s e-mail address with a sincere offer to remove them from our mailing list if they wish.

Because the e-mail uses HTML, the integrated text personalizations can be styled in any way to make the document look nicer.

The program also has features that help to avoid anti-spam filters on services like AOL and Yahoo. If I mail to the 700 people on one of my lists, these organizations notice a lot of e-mails coming in from one sender, and they usually black-list me for a day or two. It’s in the best interests of their subscribers, and I understand. MaxBulk Mailer will send my e-mails out in small groups to avoid this problem, making it possible for me to send my newsletters to the entire group without being tarred-and-feathered digitally by the big Internet providers.

I find that about half of my recipients change their e-mail address annually, and they don’t keep track of old addresses. It’s courteous to put the address to which the mail is sent at the bottom so they know how the message got to them.

I also make clear that our non-profit groups have a no-sharing policy with e-mail addresses. We do not give our list to anyone for any reason. This prevents the viral spread of e-mail addresses from one group to another, and then another. Sometimes a similar non-profit organization will ask for our list, and I always decline. Though it would be nice to get their list for my recipients, I don’t violate the no-share rule.

HTML e-mail uses the most basic HTML rules, so I can’t use CSS style sheets, or even use some “div” operations in my bulk e-mail pages. As a result, I always test the e-mail on both Mac and WIndows computers, and especially in Internet Explorer for Windows (because of its countless incompatibilities with HTML code). Once I know it works, I send it out to the whole list.

I have developed some nice looking newsletters that were sent to dozens or hundreds of recipients. I usually get one or two requests to be removed from the mailing list, and I do that immediately. With non-profit organizations it’s very important not to offend your patrons!

Spammers, don’t read this: For excellent bulk e-mailings, with distinctive personalization, MaxBulk Mailer is a fine product. I recommend it highly.

Posted by Brian Lawler on October 6, 2008 | Comments (2)