| Mass e-Mailings
 How to, and How Not to Getting folks to your Web site may take some "push," and bulk e-mail could be the answer. Here are some cheap and easy ways to get started. by Bob Weibel Bulk e-mail announcements are a good way to promote and build community around your Web site."Push" folks to your web site.Why use e-mail? Simple: that's right, its simple and effective (and inexpensive)Your normal e-mail program: when and how to use it.Mailing list servers: when you need them.One way or discussions: You can send out one-way announcements, newsletters, and ads, or start an
e-mail discussion group, where list members interact with each other.Free and easy ways to get started.Don't Spam:
(that means don't send e-mail to folks you don't know or who haven't joined your e-mail list—to do otherwise is to Spam!)Note: The prices in this article are for reference only. Because Web services are highly competitive, prices can and will change often, so check the services themselves for their latest prices.So you got a great Web site. But how do you get people to visit and, more important, revisit
your site? Sure, you should register it with several search engines. But a simple, inexpensive, and important way to get people back to your site on a regular basis is bulk e-mail. You can alert folks to your site's offerings, send update bulletins about changes, or
feature new products and services, political updates, product recalls, policy changes—you name it.Last year "push" was the big buzzword, and both Microsoft and Netscape created complex technology to allow sites to push content to browsers. Well, the buzz died, and few people use this technology because it's cumbersome and basically impractical. But plain old e-mail has fulfilled the "push" promise simply, easily, and effectively.
You surely know how to send e-mail, but sending e-mail to a large group of people brings up a lot of issues, and I'll explain them for you so you can start to take advantage of e-mail lists for your site. Push me, pull you The idea behind e-mail promotion is to "push" folks to your
site. For example, you can include a promo message and a one-click hot link straight to your URL. Once people are at your site, you can even guide them to a mailing list registration page, where they can fill in a form to disclose demographic data such as their full name and address, gender, personal or consumer interests, or anything else you have the gall to ask for. Once they've essentially "subscribed" to your site in this manner, the extra data can
help you send them relevant or "targeted" messages. On eFuse.com we kept it simple: We wanted to make it fast and easy for people to join our FuseLetter without asking a lot of nosy questions. We also offer people free fonts and graphics as an incentive to join, and feedback from
subscribers tells us the "free stuff" was one of the deciding factors in getting people to sign up. Once you do start creating e-mail newsletters, you'll want to make sure they contain information that's useful to your readers, not just you. If you make your information valuable, then you're doing a service to your readers, and they'll appreciate it and your site or company.The above description covers what's known as one-way or
announcement e-mail. But the speed of e-mail also allows for another form of "mass" e-mail known as "discussion" e-mail, wherein your subscribers can keep each other up to date on topics relevant to your Web site, whether that's technical product support, dessert recipes, political intrigue, romance, whatever. You can set up any e-mail list you create to function as an e-mail discussion group. How you handle all of this bulk e-mailing can be a complex
topic. But there are several ways to get started without a lot of additional expense and training. Of course, there are also plenty of complicated, expensive, and extremely ineffective ways as well. We offer you an overview of your options. Use of e-mail
Electronic mail is still the most heavily used Internet service. And it's not just person-to-person communication between friends or colleagues. No doubt you've received e-mail advertising and promotion, some of it from sources you expect but much of it unwanted "Spam." Fact is, whether you like it or not, you're probably on someone's list. I put myself on the e-mail lists of technology vendors, publications, and trade shows so I'll receive announcements
of products and events. Like most people, I find informative mailings to be very useful and efficient. I don't have to go looking for this information—it's coming straight to me. I'm also on a neighborhood poker-night mailing list that alerts a group of local low-stakes folks to the location of the week's game—legal, I'm told. Plus, I've joined a music e-mail discussion group and receive e-mailed questions, replies, and comments on musical topics. This supplants visiting
bulletin-board-style discussions hosted by USENET or other forums (See the Usenet article in our "Plan" section).But I could also join many business-related e-mail discussion lists covering just about any industry you could mention. Check out Liszt for a directory of more than 90,000 discussion mailing lists that you can join. Planning to give Martha Stewart Living some competition? Search Liszt and join one of two interior design discussion lists indexed there.
Or contact your local real-estate or other local business agents if they host or have joined any particular e-mail lists. You'll be amazed what you can find!
The point is, in each of the examples above, we've "subscribed" to a list, in one way or another. That means that I asked to be added to a list or didn't refuse when
someone said they wanted to add me. Essentially, the information coming to me is of service to me. If it's only serving someone else, then it's SPAM. Spam is the Internet term for "unwanted e-mail," and while most people tolerate it, some people abhor it and will be quite vocal to you about removing them from your list.
Of course, I get my share of unsolicited e-mail advertising from folks who obtained a list with my e-mail address on it. The usual get-rich-quick porno stuff and how to spy on the kids. This article deals with bulk mailing to willing "subscribers," not with "Spamming." Spamming is not a good idea, even if it sounds like a cheap way to reach a lot of people. You're not reaching a targeted audience, and more important, you aren't reaching a willing
audience. Sending Spam can give your company or group a bad reputation because many people will associate an unwanted e-mail with all of the other unwanted crap e-mail they receive. You don't want that. Mailing lists and mail servers Let's start with the basics: For a mass mailing, you need a
list of e-mail addresses and you need a machine to get a message to those addresses. Oh, and a message, of course, whether it's a "Check us out!" ad, a regular newsletter, or a tech support bulletin. Although you could sit at your desktop and send a separate message to each member of a list, that becomes impractical after a dozen or so messages. Plus your ISP will probably complain if you start sending hundreds of separate e-mail messages a day. And it's unnecessary, since
you can find a variety of ways to handle it automatically, some even for free, as we'll show later. Your normal e-mail program If your list is small, say less than 100 names, then yes, you can do it using the e-mail program you use now. Most of these programs allow you to enter multiple addresses for a
single message. Often, the addresses are separated by a semi-colon (;), but it differs from program to program. The more addresses you have, the longer the message takes to send, so using this method can get very slow.If you do it yourself, use BCC. If you do use your own e-mail program, make sure to put the multiple names in the "BCC" (Blind carbon copy) field. If you put them in the "to" or "cc" fields, then every recipient will receive a copy of your
mailing list, something you may not want to share. It also makes your message take longer to download. Lists can be valuable commodities and you want to keep your list to yourself. If your e-mail program doesn't have a BCC feature, find one that does. Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer offer free e-mail programs that include a BCC feature. Mailing list servers Most e-mail bulk mailing, in fact, is handled by computers running mail list server software—known as a mailing list server. Instead of just sending a message to one e-mail address (and any "carbon copies"), a mailing list server looks at the message you sent, finds your mailing list—which you've set up with your ISP or other bulk mailing service—and mails the message to every address on the list.
Most mailing-list servers also provide for list management. Obviously you'll need to add and remove people and update any demographic data recorded along with their e-mail addresses. A good list manager also lets you set up automated procedures for verifying that a subscriber's e-mail address is legitimate—usually by sending them a confirmation e-mail. You should also be able to automate "bounce-back" procedures that handle mail that's returned
because of an invalid e-mail address. Finally, you may want the manager to automatically archive the messages, probably in Web-ready HTML format, so folks can browse past messages. You'll find a wide range of list management interfaces. Some server software sports easy-to-use Web browser-based control, while others, such as the industrial-strength Majordomo package discussed later, require sending rather cryptic e-mail control messages and manipulating CGI/Perl
server scripts. Most "free" list hosting services we discuss later provide easy list management, although they don't let you download the lists you build, nor do they let you upload previously created list data, unless you start paying. "Announcement"
or discussion lists
OK, so you sent a message to a couple of thousand e-mail addresses. What happens after that depends on which type of list you're maintaining. There are basically two types: "Announcement" lists send announcements or advertising. Anyone responding is simply sending a message back to you (to the mailing list server, usually). The product announcement lists I have subscribed to work that way. "Discussion lists" are the second type: If someone on the
list replies to the bulk mailing, that return message is sent back out to everyone on the list. My neighborhood poker list is a good example: If I reply that I can't make this week's game but that I'd like to host next week's game, everyone on the poker list sees that message, not just the guy or gal who sent it—it's real democratic. Folks can comment on the invitation, toss it around if necessary, and then give a collective "yes" to the idea. Everyone's in on the discussion.
If you save all of the messages, you would end up with something very much like a discussion-group "thread." In fact, services that can host your discussion group mailing lists can often "archive" the mailings into "threads" for folks to review later. Cool, huh? Or if you join a tech support mailing list, folks can post questions and answers, and others can take advantage of the solutions discussed. Mailing list service You'll either build your own list, rent one, or buy one, as we'll cover further on. But how you go depends on how you choose to do the mailing. Here are the main options, from easy to hard: Free and easy: Several Web sites will do your mass mailings for free. Free, if you don't mind them sticking a little banner ad on each message. Here's a rundown of the most prominent.eGroups— A simple, straightforward announcement or discussion list service with an easy interface that I really like. It lacks the demographics tracking of the others listed here and doesn't yet offer subscription form support for your Web site, but it does allow you to "bulk enter" lists by simply copying and pasting in lists of e-mail addresses formatted as one address per line — i.e., separated by a carriage return.
The free version adds a two-line ad at the bottom of the message, something you can avoid by paying $4.95 monthly. The payment due initially is a nonrefundable setup charge equal to the first 12 months ($59.40). 
Topica—Here's a simple and free way to run either an announcement or discussion list. One advantage here is that Topica keeps a comprehensive list of topics, so, if you want, your list can be publicly listed for others to join more easily. Like other free services, Topica includes an advertisement
for one of their sponsors at the end of the message (that's what pays for the service so you don't have to).
ListBot— Fill out an on-line form and ListBot will bulk mail one 10K message for you per day. Its simple, clear interface makes it easy to use. You can easily create a new list, either an announcement or discussion list, with more options than I can describe here. ListBot generates HTML code that you can then copy and paste into your Web site. The code automatically creates a sign-up form for visitors to fill out,
including age/gender/address/occupation demographic information. To kick things off, you can add member e-mails to your list—unfortunately by hand, one by one, no way to upload an existing list. ListBot automatically invites them to your Web site, where they can also fill out the form. 
Website Post Office— Similar in concept to ListBot although you can send as many messages as you want and it doesn't currently offer discussion-group mailing lists. You can build as many lists as you want, with an unlimited number of members.One List— One List explicitly forbids business-opportunity, opt-in, MLM, network marketing, or get-rich-quick promotions, and lists that advertise businesses or sites dedicated only to trading pictures. As with the others above,
the service is free, but One List places an ad banner in each message it delivers. You can join other lists that interest you and view their archives. Discussion lists are the norm at One List, but you can opt for an announcement list. You can also opt for a publicly accessible archive, a private one, or none, and maintain an unlisted list, if you want. You can have your URL automatically included in messages, but One List doesn't offer you Web-page form capability like the two
above, which generate HTML form code enabling visitors to join the list from your Web site. You can enter a maximum of 250 addresses at one time, by copying and pasting a list of user names and addresses—the formats are described on-line. Moderators, the people who "run" the discussion, can now download as a text file their list of e-mail addresses. You can also choose to "moderate"— approve their postings — individual subscribers, leaving the
rest of the list un-moderated, nice when you've got only a handful of rascals on board. Pay to play If you're willing to pay a monthly fee, usually either a flat rate or one based on the number of megabytes in your mail transmissions, you can get e-mail service without advertising
attached. You can also get extra services such as personalized messages, improved demographics targeting, and the ability to import your own list or use subscription lists compiled by the service provider. Here are some examples of what you'll find.Upgrades to free services — ListBot, Website Post Office (just $9.99 per month), eGroups, and other free services also offer "commercial" services, with additional features. For example, for only $79 a year, ListBot Gold includes all features found in ListBot Free plus your messages don't carry banner ads and larger messages (up to 50K) are allowed. You can also personalize messages. That base price lets you send 1,000 message units a month (one message to
one address = one message unit). You can pay for additional units: An extra 1,000 1K message units runs an extra $8.33. 
Website Post Office's Commercial version for $9.99 monthly or $99.99 yearly also gets you 1,000 ad-free message units,
plus it lets you import up to 2,000 addresses from your own list. In addition to personalized messages, and demographically targeted mailings, you can also include URLs in your e-mail and track how many of your list members click on the links to go to your Web page. Mail hosting sites ListServe Ease— ListServe offers many levels and price points for hosting your mailing list on its systems. At the low end is Loft's EASE
Home, with a $5 to $10 one-time setup fee and monthly charges ranging from $8 for one to 25 subscribers to $34 for 251 to 300 subscribers, although you can negotiate fees for larger lists up to 1,000. You get 1MB of disk space, with a 25-cent per MB monthly charge after that. "Home" means noncommercial use, even excluding
consulting and public relations. You're limited to 100 messages a day, no larger than 100K each.For business promotion or sales, LSOFT also offers an EASE Business service starting at $500 a year for 150 subscribers
to $3,430 for 500 subscribers (negotiable beyond that). EASE Business prices at five service levels, largely depending on what level of LSOFT personnel support and maintenance you desire. For large, one-way mailing lists, such as regularly mailed newsletters, announcement lists, and electronic magazines, LSOFT offers an EASE Bulk
service. A daily newsletter to 5,000 subscribers would cost $2,250 a year or 45 cents per subscriber per year, for example, while a monthly newsletter would run $850/year or 17 cents per subscriber per year. Prices vary according to technical support levels and list size.Some others worth checking out: Lyris offers a lot of features, at a very reasonable price, and is a good choice for people with large lists because they can be sent inexpensively. For example, if you send 50,000 messages once a week, it costs only $0.001 per message ($1 per 1000).
If your list has 20,000 members and you send 1 message a week the cost would be $80 a month. If your list has 20,000 members and you send 1 message a day the cost would be $400 a month. For a discussion list, If your list has 2000 members and you send 5 messages a day the cost would be $200 a month. There's a minimum monthly fee of $49.95, so this isn't the best choice for small lists, but if you have bigger needs, Lyris may be the most cost-effective way to handle them.Petidomo - While they mostly sell their software, they also
offer to host your list. They charge $80 to set up the list, then they bill monthly based on the amount of traffic generated, starting from $115 for up to 30MB, to $925 for up to 1GIG.List providers — Companies such as Exposure Internet Marketing
maintain large subscriber mailing lists that you can essentially rent for each bulk mailing you do—they also deliver the message. Exposure Internet's pricing ranges from $199 for 100,000 recipients (about 500 a buck) to $999 for 1 million (a thousand per buck). Exposure Internet claims its lists are "subscriber-based," meaning the folks on the lists have indicated they want to receive e-mail advertising — i.e., they're supposedly Spam-proof (see the Spam section further on).For a comprehensive list, with summaries, of other list provider/mailing services, click here.Your ISP — Many Internet Service Providers also operate mailing list servers that you can utilize, usually for a fee. The
ease-of-use factor may vary considerably, as may pricing and server capacity. My ISP, for example, would charge me a $70 setup fee and $25 a month to do mass mailings from its list server. I'd have to familiarize myself with the cryptic, e-mail-based list management commands used in the Majordomo (covered further on) list server software at my ISP. Plus, I'd make sure to tell the size of lists I'd anticipate. My ISP starts to blanch at lists larger than 10,000 addresses. According to the Webmaster, its list server would require half a day to process a 30,000-address mailing of a single message, tying up the server for other paid users. Definitely compare your ISP's mail-list pricing and performance with the regional/national firms mentioned above, and others you may encounter.
Running your own server If you or your firm operate your own Web server setup, you might consider doing your own mail list service. This can be a complicated undertaking, involving intimate knowledge of the PERL or other CGI-scripting language to install and
manage both mailing lists and the mail-delivery systems. Details about this are beyond the scope of this introductory article, but here are some professional-level mail-management software links to check out.Majordomo — UNIX/Perl freeware. Majordomo is a widely used, freeware list manager server software that does not include Internet mail delivery service. All list management activities are handled by e-mail, so you, the list owner, don't need access to the Majordomo server machine. Majordomo supports the archival and remote retrieval of messages, protection against forged subscriptions, message filters, and other stuff. LISTSERV —
( LSOFT International, sales@lsoft.com) Windows NT, UNIX, VMS, OpenVMS. LISTSERV is
LSOFT's mail list manager server software that, like Majordomo, doesn't include mail-delivery service. That is provided by LSOFT's LSMTP software. You can start with its $97 Windows 95 shareware version of LISTSERV (http://www.lsoft.com/win95-info.html) for up to 150 subscribers, provided without technical support, as a three-month trial. (It will deliver your LISTSERV mail for $39 a year) Shareware prices can be as high as $297 for up to 2,500 subscribers. LSOFT also offers its Windows 95 LISTSERV Free Edition to noncommercial (no-profit) users for the benefit of people who want to run interest-based discussion groups, strictly on a nonprofit basis, but who cannot afford a commercial list manager. If you don't quite fit the no-profit category, you can still purchase it as LSERV Lite, capable of handling 5 to 20 mailing lists of up to 2,000 subscribers each. Prices range from $500 to $2,000 depending on the operating system (Window 95/NT, VMS, UNIX) list/subscriber capacity.
You'll find pricing, policies, and download options at the link above.You'll need to reach for LSOFT's LSERVE Classic or HPO versions if you're contemplating huge bulk mailings in the 10,000 to a million subscriber range. Prices aren't quoted at LSOFT's Web site. Lyris — ( Shelby Group, info@shelby.com ) Windows 95/98/NT, Unix. The Lyris Free version costs nothing and will handle up to 200 lists, with as many members as you like. Prices then range from $495 for the 500-member
maximum Silver version to the $4,995 unlimited-member Platinum version.UnityMail/GroupMaster ( Revnet Systems, info@revet.com). Windows 95/NT. UnityMail 2 e-mail list server software prices out between $3,995 and beyond $13,000 depending on the number of lists and list size you wish to handle. The GroupMaster e-mail list manager's
Web-based front end lets you build a mailing list and manage it from your Web browser. Subscribers join the lists from your Web site or via e-mail. Bad e-mail addresses or "bounces" are removed automatically. It's priced between $999 and $9,995. Other low-cost approaches
Boomasoft's WebForms ($99, Windows 95/98/NT) Most Web-page on-line forms, such as those for mailing-list subscriptions, require special software extensions or CGI/Perl scripts running on the Web server computer. That's not always easy or even possible when an ISP hosts your site, but Boomasoft's WebForms lets you gather data
from Web-page forms without server software. Instead, you create forms with a forms designer module. That software then generates Java applets for handling the form from the viewer's browser—what's known as "client-side" processing—not on the Web server. You simply paste the Java parameter code into your Web-page HTML, and then copy the Java applet files to a special directory on your Web server subdirectory—via FTP, typically.
When a visitor to your site hits the form page, the Booma form's Java applet downloads and runs on its browser. When it finishes the form and "sends" it, the resulting data is sent to you via e-mail. A bundled utility called Booma Bot logs onto the e-mail account periodically, automatically downloads the data messages, and adds the contents to an Access- or Paradox-compatible database. Booma provides a Viewer utility for browsing the accumulated database. An
AutoResponder module lets you create customized automatic e-mail response messages to your Web site visitors after they filled out your Web form. I checked the free 30-day demo available for download and managed to create a form, update my Web page, and properly copy all files to my site, in about an hour and a half. Not bad considering the number of steps involved; and it actually works! You should reserve a separate e-mail address for Booma WebForm responses (or use the Booma
Bot to check your mail before you check it with your normal e-mail program) since you may have problems if form responses get mixed up with other e-mail messages. If form messages were downloaded to Outlook while I was checking other mail, for example, the Booma Bot wouldn't find them later, even if it marked the downloaded messages as "unread." 
Revnet's MailKing is a $99 super "mail-merge" application for creating personalized messages you send via standard
Internet e-mail, not via server-based list managers such as those above. MailKing is designed to easily and directly import list data from Excel, Access, Eudora, and Outlook. Targeting mail to certain demographic categories is easy, as is personalized mail. Spam
If you have an e-mail account, you've probably received unwanted advertising messages. Known in the trade as unsolicited e-mail, or Spam (the name of which originally comes from Shoulder of Pork with hAM but in reality e-mail Spam has nothing to do with the canned meat product, and the whereabouts of this term are hazy), they're usually time-wasting, irritating, even offensive, and waste Internet transmission resources. But imagine that you've
got a Web site that could be a real money-maker for you; you just have to steer folks to it. Suddenly, you're tempted to lurk at on-line forums and glean e-mail addresses for a bulk mailing of your own, or you start looking to buy a mailing list from a Spam-specialty firm. Suddenly, from the seller's end, Spam doesn't look so bad, because it actually pays—otherwise folks wouldn't do it. But Spam's bad, and you should take care not to do it, because if
you do, you can alienate more potential site visitors than you attract. Avoid Spamming You could Spam, without realizing you're doing it. A company offers you a list of "targeted" e-mail addresses: Did you inquire where they got these folks? Did the folks on the list
consciously "subscribe" to the list, indicating that, "Yes," they want to receive advertising and promotion relating to certain classes of products or interests? If so, then you're NOT Spamming when you send relevant bulk e-mail to these folks. But if this firm sent Internet robots out to secretly glean e-mail addresses from newsgroups and other on-line forums, for example, then pretty much anything you e-mail to these folks is Spam. Protecting your lists from Spammers It would really be too bad if you encouraged folks to subscribe to your mailing list, only be hit by Spam. So protect them, and yourself. First, monitor your list activity. Make sure you're on the list (s), and at least periodically, LOOK at the mail! Of course, if you created a moderated list for
discussion-group mailing lists, all submissions will be sent to you first for approval. Such total control will take some of your time, though. Also, make darn sure the mailing archives on your site are not accessible to search engines. Certainly don't register them, and do ask your ISP or e-mail hoster how to make sure these archives stay hidden. Password-protection is one option. Otherwise Spammers and other nasties can find the
archives and then Spam your list members. Also, ask your ISP or list hoster if its server software is running any Spam filters. Especially for publicly accessible lists, these filters can analyze the content, addressing patterns, and other aspects of a bulk e-mailing and detect a possible Spamming effort. LISTSERV software, for example, on detecting a possible Spam will start automatically forwarding all messages from that sender to the list owners for human verification.
Finally, if you're sending out lots of e-mail yourself, make sure to put the addresses in the BCC field, so they aren't received by everyone on the list. How to handle SPAM you receive The best way to handle Spam is to delete it and not respond to it. If everyone boycotted Spam advertising and promotion,
the industry would be dead in a month. Make Spam illegal, and you'd get the same result. If you've got time to take a more active stand, check out some of these anti-Spam organizations and other resources:Fight Spam on the Internet! Campaign.The Netizen's Guide to Spam, Abuse, and Internet Advertising.Netcitizens Against Gratuitous Spamming (NAGS).Get that Spammer: On-line tools and instructions for tracking down junk e-mailers, junk news posters, and their Internet service providers.Campaign to stop junk e-mail.U.S. law codes covering telephone solicitations.Spamicide anti-Spam filter for Mac and Windows.Links to other anti-Spam e-mail utilities. Good Mail But don't be freaked! Mailing lists are serving zillions of satisfied folks around the world, and you can be part of it. Start with the easy stuff outlined above. As you gain
confidence, skill, and good returns, you can start investing in larger-scale bulk mailing service and software. 
About the author  Bob Weibel is a contributing editor for Publish magazine, and publishing adviser columnist for Computer Currents magazine.
Illustration: Business Constructions by Russel Thurston of
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