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Creation Of A Large-Scale E-Mail List
Scrublet
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Back in school, I used to manage the day-to-day infrastructure of a ski club. This was pretty easy to do because the school provided access to a software product called L-Soft for managing listservs. I'm now working for a company that has a very new, developing ski club. Last season (my first with the company), the e-mail membership grew to over 150 names, which has made their current practice of e-mailing a bunch of individual addresses unreasonable.
Since none of the current club leadership has any real experience with managing a ski club or its trips, I've stepped up to bring some of my past experiences to the table, but I'm not really sure how to solve this problem. Back in school this was just provided for all clubs on-campus, so I never had to worry about it. I don't think Google Groups isn't really a viable option because of its account system and such...anyone with experience managing a casual group like this knows that people are extremely lazy...the most I can expect from the members is that they give me an e-mail I can hit up.
tl;dr, I need a webservice that I can plug upwards of 200-300 e-mails into, and then e-mail a single address to hit all of those. E-mailing something like companyskiclub@something.com should send the e-mail to all those people. Anyone know of something (preferably free, but that's negotiable) that can do this?
Since none of the current club leadership has any real experience with managing a ski club or its trips, I've stepped up to bring some of my past experiences to the table, but I'm not really sure how to solve this problem. Back in school this was just provided for all clubs on-campus, so I never had to worry about it. I don't think Google Groups isn't really a viable option because of its account system and such...anyone with experience managing a casual group like this knows that people are extremely lazy...the most I can expect from the members is that they give me an e-mail I can hit up.
tl;dr, I need a webservice that I can plug upwards of 200-300 e-mails into, and then e-mail a single address to hit all of those. E-mailing something like companyskiclub@something.com should send the e-mail to all those people. Anyone know of something (preferably free, but that's negotiable) that can do this?
Scrublet on
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(Full disclosure: I work for them.)
We're on Exchange with Outlook 2003. The issue here is that I want the different leaders to all be able to e-mail something knowing it's an up to date list. For instance, say I set myself up a group of 200 people in my contacts, but then at some point add 20 more. If I understand it, I'll be the only one who has those 20 names...everyone else may have saved it earlier, but they would have to update. Adding a list to Exchange isn't possible I think...my company is a major company whose Exchange network covers over 100,000 employees.
That mailchimp program may be exactly what I'm looking for...anyone got any firsthand experience with it? $10/month would definitely cover our needs and we have dues for shit like this. When I get home from work I'm going to look at this, if it settles it and no one says anything bad here about it I'll update title with a lock request.
PSN: TheScrublet
Thanks for the info. If the mailchimp thing works I may go with that for the extreme price difference. L-Soft definitely seems geared to much larger scale distros than I'll be dealing with.
PSN: TheScrublet
http://www.constantcontact.com/
If you have Exchange and want to use it to do the sending, Arial Software has a pricey, but solid program:
http://www.arialsoftware.com/enterprise.htm
What I'm looking for is a service that will create an e-mail (say randomclub@randomisp.net). This e-mail will have a list associated with it, that I can modify as an admin. I want the ability for anyone on the list to e-mail the address and have it reach all members. Replying to an e-mail from the address should reach ONLY the member who sent the e-mail. I should have the ability to lock down the list if I need to when some idiots start hitting reply-all and the list starts getting spammed (this happened once).
I checked out the EASE list from McViking but couldn't get a price on it...that leads me to believe it is oriented towards a bigger enterprise than what I'm trying to do. Any feedback based on this?
PSN: TheScrublet
I guess that's the tricky part otherwise something like usenet or whatever would probably work fine. Maybe play around with things like yahoo groups, Google groups (both usenet type things, I beleive) or even project management suits like Basecamp (which has a thing called Writeboard that works like an email discussion group) and see if you can configure them so replies only go to the originator of the discussion thread.
Alternatively, you could possibly creatively configure your email host to do something like that. It's certainly easy enough to configure an email address that automatically redirects to other email addresses, perhaps customise that so that the return address doesn't go to the same address but rather to the original emails address.
So if I email from szech@domain.com to list@domain.com then list@domain.com is configured to BCc forward to 1@domain.com, 2@domain.com etc. but the Reply To address in the forwarded email is actually szech@domain.com. Something like that, I guess it would depend on how advanced the email configuration options are in your email host's configuration panel.
Yeah, Exchange can do all of this.
Create a Group called skiclub@blackdiamond.com Add all the names - it's easy if they're all internal, e.x., already have Active Directory/Exchange accounts. Set up permissions to allow anyone to email to the group, if that's what you want. When someone emails the Group and you Reply, it will just go to the Sender.
Updating would just require someone to update the Group in Exchange - not a major task. You're right that updating your off-line contact list wouldn't update the group.
Also, I would prefer to have external people be able to e-mail the list, but if I'm covered on everything else I've said that's a marginal feature.
PSN: TheScrublet
So when you go to email someone with the company, Outlook looks up the name in Exchange/AD, checks to see if you're allowed to send to that account, then sends the email. That's the good thing about using Exchange, is that once someone is removed from the account table, it removes it from all groups they're assigned to.*
Anyone with Active Directory privileges (IT, HelpDesk) should be able to do it. It's similar to adding a new employee, not a major deal unless you want them to update it every day.
External people can email it too - it's just another address within the company; skiclub @ [companyname].com.
* All this is not exclusive to Exchange, works with any enterprise-level messaging system.
Sorry; wasn't paying attention to this thread. If what you're doing is non-commercial, you should check out our EASE-HOME service, which is oriented toward clubs and hobby lists, and is pretty affordable. You were probably looking at the EASE business stuff, which is more for commercial businesses.
Feel free to PM me if folks don't want me to be so sales pitch-y on the thread.
That is exactly what I'm looking for. If anyone knows of anything cheaper let me know...otherwise this covers it. I'll have to see if the group's willing to pay $30/month for it (we'll be at about 200-250 subscribers this season I'm guessing). My guess is we'll probably go with the Exchange DL that was described above, assuming the company approves its creation. That's not something I can just go do on my own. Thanks everyone!
PSN: TheScrublet