The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Ways to Run an E-mail Newsletter Gordon Woolf

In using the Internet for promoting a business or activity there is one tool that is often overlooked - the e-mail newsletter.

Unlike Web pages, information distributed via e-mail does not require the recipient to be proactive in visiting to get the information - it arrives in their e-mail intray.

We are not talking here of communication which is in any way related to spam. Most e-mail newsletters require the subscriber to sign on to receive the information. Etiquette requires the inclusion of details on how to cancel the subscription, and this is often given at the beginning of every issue. It is then up to the creator to ensure the newsletter is sufficiently interesting that this doesn't happen.

You can handle a small circulation entirely within the average mailing program, though some, such as Eudora and Pegasus make this easier by enabling the list of recipients to be kept in a simple text file.

One point to mention here - if your mail program does not handle such lists, keep your subscribers in the "bcc" ("blind carbon copy") section rather than in the "To:" or "Copy to:" sections of the headers, and you will not be providing the circulation list to all who receive an issue. "bcc" is available in just about every mail program, though some seem to hide it fairly well.

Some service providers also limit the number of recipients for a single message, as a reasonable action to avoid them getting a bad name as sources of spam. If this was to happen, ordinary users of e-mail from that provider might find their mail blocked by other ISPs. It happened to hotmail before their takeover by Microsoft.

Therefore, if you are considering a newsletter going to several hundred subscribers, ask your ISP what their attitude is. At the very least they may ask that you send it at certain times to avoid slowing their system - a message going to a few hundred addresses can take a substantial chunk of mail server time and processing power. For this reason, many of the larger ISPs offer a mail list management service using one of the programs designed for this kind of distribution, often described as an e-mail list service.

The normal use of lists is the extremely useful one of providing for group mailing to people with a common interest. Those who subscribe to the list service send one message to the list server and it is distributed to all on the list, either as a single message or as a single-message digest of all messages received on that day.

However, list software provides the equally useful means of distributing on a one-way basis. Our Format newsletter gives information which may help those producing print-based newsletters, magazines and newspapers. This goes currently to more than 1500 people who have either sent an e-mail or filled in a Web form to receive it, and it does allow people to hit the reply button on their mail program, but such replies go to me as the list owner rather than to the list as a whole. If they are of general interest their content will be included in the next issue.

Details of who can post to such lists, what happens to incoming messages and what subscribers need to do to sign on or off are controlled from a configuration file. This is usually just a text file that can be received from the server for editing by the list owner in any text editing program (or even in the mail program) and sent back to the server by e-mail. This action requires one or more security checks such as a password and a check by the mail server that the message with the password is coming from the source it expects.

Some list server software also allows editing of settings and subscriber lists from a password-protected Web page.

The server software will automatically handle subscribe and unsubscribe requests and will count error message produced by mail for any subscriber, deleting such addresses after a specific number of error messages in a specify time, which you may be able to vary. Some of the software will, on request forward such messages or a summary of them to the list owner - which provides a sobering insight into the ability of the Internet to deliver e-mail. Even major ISP mail servers seem to have their off days.

If your service provider does not already offer such a list service, it may be worth including in your enquiries when you are shopping around. In m cases you will find that it is a service offered by service providers who are genuinely keen to host Web pages which will be more popular than the average family Web site.

Most such providers also host their 1 service on a separate server to their l pages and normal e-mail server, because lists can be demanding on server processor time. A list of several hundred can take an hour to process if the addresses are widely distribute around the world.

It is for this reason that we are seeing the end of list hosting being freely available through universities and of academic institutions. It is still fairly common for ISPs who are seeking hosting to offer a free list service in order to attract paying web-hosting business, but there are other list ser which are offered either on a paying basis or in return for the right to include advertisements at the begin or end of each message.

For a club or group with a common interest, such advertisements may be acceptable (you can usually restrict them to certain types, such as excluding any "adult" ads), but for a business may want to ensure that, if ads are to be included, they'll only be your own such cases you may need to look at commercial list services, which seem to start at around US$100 a year for a monthly newsletter with up to a few thousand subscribers, and with a guarantee of overnight delivery.

The provision of mailing list services is becoming a specialty also of companies who do not offer ISP or Web-hosting services. Some of these offer free list services to voluntary organisations and rates for business use which may start at around $5 or $6 a month.

You may also like to ask your service provider whether they are prepared to consider such a service. If they are based on UNIX, they could use free software such as Majordomo. Alternatively, especially if you are providing your own server, it could be worth looking at the commercial software Listserv, which is provided on a lease basis, including regular updates. On Windows NT, there is NTList from UK company Gordano.

Among the advantages of Listserv is the ability to "distribute" the load of sending messages worldwide. For example, rather than sending many messages to individual subscribers in Europe or the US, the software would send one message and a list of recipients to a Listserv server in each continent from where it would be distributed according to a list of domains.

Other software that provides mailing list facilities include ListProc, IDG, and Maiser - the latter being part of the Mercury Mail Transport System created by New Zealander David Harris, perhaps best known for his Pegasus mail reader.

While most e-mail newsletters are in straight text format, HTML format is also used, so that the subset of HTML code recognised by most mail readers can be used to increase legibility, at the cost of larger messages. It is generally true that e-mail newsletters should be kept to short items, maybe pointing to more information on a Web page. Few people like reading long slabs of text on screen, and you can soon reach the maximum length which a subscriber will accept if they have to dial in to receive their e-mail.

Whether you consider a simple circular to customers or members - or a much more widely distributed newsletter you can be sure that the total cost will be much less than if it were posted by traditional snail mail, and a well written one can prove more effective.

About the Author
Gordon Woolf is co-owner of the PageMaker List, a self-help e-mail list of users of Adobe PageMaker software, hosted by Purdue University, Indiana http://www.hypercorp.com/gain/pm/ and owner of the Format e-mail newsletter, catering for those who produce printed newsletters, magazines and newspapers, with subscribers in 60 countries, http://www.worsleypress.com/format/ 

Reprinted from the October 2000 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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