Best way to send out mass emails?

Question

My boss is still working with the tech server guy to get an account registered on google apps but right now I'm using Microsoft Outlook 2010. Apparently sending out a BCC that is full of email addresses makes the file size really big and I always get "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" because the file size exceeds the limit on the recipient mail server. Is there a way to send an email to multiple email addresses at once but have the server send out one email at a time so that it will look like I am sending out individual emails?

Answer 1

I would recommend using a script on a web server to send the e-mail in batches, usually 50 emails per batch tends to work quite well for me.



I'll assume you're using PHP and MySQL but if you're not then I'm sure your developers will be able to convert the idea easily enough.



>establish a connection to the database

>Use a for loop to iterate 50 times

>>pull a record from the database where the person has not already been sent a mail

>>construct a mail to the recipient

>>send the mail

>>make a record that you haven't sent the mail to that person

>>wait for a small amount (25ms works for us)

>wait a few minutes before running the script again





I don't know how much mail you have to send but we only have to send 600-700 mails and this solution seems to work for us.



And Zarn: Grow up. The majority of "spam" is issued by botnets whereby the software creators are already capable of far more advanced solutions than "sending lots of emails". There are plenty of reasons to send mass e-mails to people.

Answer 2

So, you basically want a spam machine.



Nope, not going to help you. If you have a legitimate reason for doing this, you should already know how.



@Regexix:

If he's sending out emails with cc and bcc fields so large that the emails are rejected, then it is by definition spam - or, if they have a legitimate reason for doing something like this, they should already know how. So, this is still basically a spam machine.



@Asker:

"Just because someone wants to send out mass emails to people doesn't automatically label them as a "spammer"." Well, actually, if the "press release" is unsolicited, then it is by definition spam... The only hints I'm going to drop when it comes to a more legitimate way of doing this rather than spamming the world: RSS feeds, Twitter and web pages.

Answer 3

No Zarn... He doesn't want the large file sizes associated with using the cc/bcc feature.



I wouldn't know how to do this, sorry.