Using Outlook to Send Bulk Emails, What Should I Look Out For?

[msafi]

Hi,

I need to send emails to a list of 200 people, but I need to attach a file. GetResponse/Aweber wants me to confirm every email I import and iContact doesn't allow attachments.

I don't want to include the attachment as a hyperlink because that's not the customary way of doing it.

A friend advised that I use Outlook. I don't have a problem with that, but I'm just worried about the deliverability. What things should I look out for that may flag my message as spam?

Thanks a lot,

[DonTino]

Use a subject line that doesn't have any typical spam words in it. In fact try to avoid them in your message as well.

I'm not sure about how to send mass mail to a list using outlook but I think it is done via bcc. I'm not sure if that will qualify a message as spam.

If you want to make 100% sure they go through send each mesage individually.

Tino

[rosetrees]

And - depending on your ISP - you may find you can't send 200 emails at one time. Many ISPs only allow around 50 - to stop spamming.

[msafi]

I read about a feature that's called Mail Merge I think. It allows you to send emails one at a time, and it reads from a spreadsheet to customize, for example, the first and last name of your greeting.

I think I will go ahead and use that feature. But I think I need to read up on how to avoid things that flag emails as spam.

[Headhunting55]

Originally Posted by rosetrees

And - depending on your ISP - you may find you can't send 200 emails at one time. Many ISPs only allow around 50 - to stop spamming.

That is correct....I worked for an ISP, and 50 was the threshhold for considering it as being spam. I would even go a little lower, maybe 35-40.

[coco28]

I wouldn't open a personal email (even from a trusted source) which contained an attachment, and I think you will find a lot of other people wouldn't either, as this is the easiest way to infect a computer with a virus.

If I were you, I would look into emailing a URL for the attachment download...

[msafi]

Basically, I'm sending resumes to recruiters. It is customary to include the file as an attachment. In my case, it's the other way around. If I included a link, the recipients would be suspicious and would not download the file...

[coco28]

Originally Posted by msafi

Basically, I'm sending resumes to recruiters. It is customary to include the file as an attachment. In my case, it's the other way around. If I included a link, the recipients would be suspicious and would not download the file...

If its only 200, then I would send several emails manually, BCC-ing about 20 recipients at a time, to guard against spam filters. If your list gets big to the extent that it becomes too time consuming to do this manually, it would be fairly straightforward to write a program to automate this procedure.