posted on February 12, 2007 04:35:36 PM new
I have about 400 regular customers on ebay and I usually send them an email each week letting them know what items I am posting for the week (mostly collectibles).
However, both gmail and YAHOO! are giving me problems; neither of them let me send out emails in bulk. When I try it, most of the emails are returned to me.
These are not spam emails; my customers want to see what I am posting in advance. Does anyone know of a service which would allow me to send out 400 emails simultaneously? thanks.
posted on February 12, 2007 05:02:52 PM new
IF this is one mailing once a week, why don't you break up your 400-address list into 40 smaller lists?
There's no reason why they all have to go out at once, is there? Send 'em out over the course of a day.
We send out our own EOAs from an upstairs computer. The software is written to throttle back outgoing mail so that no more than 10 EOAs go out per half-hour, no matter how many sales we've made. This is slow enough so it doesn't trigger downstream UCE filters.
posted on February 12, 2007 05:42:01 PM newThese are not spam emails; my customers want to see what I am posting in advance.
Have your customers specifically requested this? Or are you just assuming they do? Unless they've specifically asked to be on a mailing list, you ARE sending SPAM. If that's the case, you shouldn't continue with your current methods and should establish a mailing list that customers can opt-in and out of.
If your emails really aren't SPAM... then Fluffy's advice is actually pretty good. I'd take it a step further and suggest that you try sending the messages from an ISP based email address, rather than a web-based email address. In otherwords, whatever service (Earthlink, Netzero, Verizon, AOL, etc...) provides you with your internet connection, also probably provides you with an email account. Use that instead of web-based ones like Yahoo, Gmail, etc... The web-based ones usually have stricter bulk sending restrictions due to the anonymity related to their accounts.
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posted on February 12, 2007 06:38:58 PM new
It may be that some of your customers have marked your emails as spam. My husband never notices to check the "Do not contact me" box when he fills out an order or makes an inquiry. I flag a lot of stuff as spam that he likely "asked for" by default.
It is also possible it is an error. My husband is a teacher and a lot of the college kids use gMail. For several weeks everything he sent was refused with a canned response that our address was a known spanner. Not so. Took a few email with the header info before they admitted it was an error and fixed it.
Somewhere in the bounced email from gMail there should be a web page to ask for a correction. -----o----o----o----o----o----o----o----o
“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
posted on February 12, 2007 08:55:50 PM newHowever, both gmail and YAHOO! are giving me problems; neither of them let me send out emails in bulk. When I try it, most of the emails are returned to me.
It doesn't sound like a Yahoo or gmail problem at all. It actually sounds like operator error. I can state that both of the examples you have stated do in fact allow bulk e-mails.
If your e-mails are coming back, then both systems are sending them, so that's not your problem. Either you have the e-mail addresses incorrect or you are forgetting to use commas to separate the e-mail addresses. Also, you may be above the maximum of e-mail addresses per e-mail. I know with hotmail, your allowed 50 per e-mail. Not sure on the others as my bulk e-mails haven't had that many addressess.
You may also find the free systems might not allow 400 at the same time. I do as fluffy stated often through hotmail. I will send out 10 e-mails of 50 addresses each. Works well, just a little longer than sending one big one, but still much faster than sending 500 individual e-mails.
