Managing Simple Mailing Lists

>Anyone have any suggestions as to how one could easily (stress that
>word) manage a growing mail list on different platforms??
>Hell, I'd import the list to Notes every day if I could somehow just
>manage it on my Mac.
>Running OS X 10.4.4 on a Dual 2 G5.
>
>Thanks for any suggestions


It sounds to me like you are asking about managing a local mail group
(meaning something "client based" on your local computer.) Mailman is
a mailing LIST manager which runs on a server. Two very different
things.

First of all I'd check to see if whomever provides your email or
internet access also provides a list service. many of today's mail
servers in use by ISPs include some list functionality.

That said, if you have access to an Internet connected machine and
can spend a bit of time to configure mailman or a similar package,
once set up it is VERY easy to manage.


--

Chuck Goolsbee V.P. Technical Operations
_________________________________________________________________
digital.forest Phone: +1-877-720-0483, x2001
where Internet solutions grow Int'l: +1-206-838-1630
*** celebrating eleven years of service 7/12/1994 - 7/12/2005 ***
12101 Tukwila International Blvd Fax: +1-206-838-3749
Suite 410 http://www.forest.net
Seattle, WA 98168 email: cgforest.net

Hi Rich,

I'm not totally sure of what you are seeking but here's what we do here with a mailing list of almost 4,000 addresses from customers of our mail-order business.

We store these in a field in FileMaker along with a calculation field which concatenates the person's name with their email address, formats it, and adds a comma.

Each Friday I sort these addresses by Customer Surname and export those formatted addresses+name into a series of text files -- A-B, C-E etc. This is a simple script within FileMaker. I then have an AppleScript which loads that file into TextWrangler where we lop off the last two characters (the final "," and a carriage return) then parse this file, line by line into the Bcc field of a new message in our email client, which happens to be MailSmith. With some mod's this script would also work with other email clients.

This same script sets up the title of the email so all I have to do is cut and paste text of our e-letter into the body of the email.

For bounces, I have another script in FileMaker which takes an email address from the clipboard, clears that email address from FileMaker and creates a snail mail letter advising the addressee of the bounce.

For your membership of 300 this whole procedure would be a breeze -- even though it might appear cumbersome. I have found no difficulty in having almost 700 email addresses in the Bcc field. Some ISP's may have a limit on this number and I have found that, on occasion, an outgoing email may fail if there were over 800 email addresses in the Bcc field. YMMV!

Cheers,

John Wolff Hamilton, New Zealand

re
>I'd like to see Adam write something about managing Mail Lists.


Check out macjordomo

http://macjordomo.med.cornell.edu/

I've been using it for years. It works. There is also an e-mail support
group available.

L

On Feb 1, 2006, at 6:15 PM, Google Kreme wrote:

> On 31 Jan 2006, at 16:55 , RichL wrote:
>> Then I looked for an internet based solution, but "Mailman" is WAY
>> over my head, and "Listapp" seemed much more complex than what I
>> needed.
>
> Mailman can be difficult to setup, but it is a breeze to use once it
> is setup. It's all web based admin. very simple, very powerful (AIR
> Apple uses mailman to manage all it's mailing lists).

Although I'm probably one of the least nerdy people on TidBITS Talk,
after about a day of complete and total aggravation, even I managed
to get a list set up in Mailman. And as Google Kreme mentioned, it is
a breeze once it's set up. If I can do it, anyone can.

Another plus is that if you host with Pair, Mailman is free as a part
of their beta mailing list plan, and this test never seems to go out
of beta. I've got no connection to Pair other than being a satisfied
customer, and I've recommended the service to clients over the last
few years, who seem to be happy with it as well.

Marilyn

Check out macjordomo

http://macjordomo.med.cornell.edu/

I've been using it for years. It works. There is also an e-mail support group available.

I used Macjordomo for years as well to manage five lists ranging from 100 to 700 members each. It gives you a fairly complete set of features you might find in Mailman or majordomo. All you need is two reserved e-mail addresses on your mail server. You maintain the list locally, compose a message, and use Macjordomo to send the address list plus the message to the mail server, which then sends out individual messages to each list member.

Some of the best free software I have ever used!

I didn't get in on the original post, but as a host provider, mailman
has been reliable and easy enough for most of my clients.

They are
not technically inclined people, for the most part, as I specialize
in small business and non-profit orgs. But for a simple announcement
(non-discussion) type of mailing listserv, I'd highly recommend Dada
Mail <http://mojo.skazat.com/> as an ideal and free solution, easy to
install and maintain. It's very mobile, from server to server, or
even on a Mac with SMTP outgoing turned on. I love its elegant, mac-
like simplicity. It's obvious the developer is a mac-using artist.

Jeffrey

On 1/31/06 at 3:55 PM, richardlefkomac.com (RichL) wrote:

> Anyone have any suggestions as to how one could easily (stress that
> word) manage a growing mail list on different platforms?? Hell, I'd
> import the list to Notes every day if I could somehow just manage it
> on my Mac. Running OS X 10.4.4 on a Dual 2 G5.

Back in the day, Fog City Software (the same people who made Emailer,
before it was sold to Claris) had a mailing list manager called
LetterRip that was IIRC highly regarded for ease of use. (Adam, didn't
TidBITS run off LetterRip for a while?)

I just checked and it still seems to be available, in OS X as well as
Classic versions, now from a company called LetterRip Software.
<http://www.letterrip.com/> They've got a 30-day demo listed.


Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

...Cats are the proof of a higher purpose to the universe.

At 3:15 PM -0800 2/1/06, Google Kreme wrote:
>Mailman can be difficult to setup, but it is a breeze to use once it
>is setup. It's all web based admin. very simple, very powerful (AIR
>Apple uses mailman to manage all it's mailing lists).

Speaking of which, anyone know if Mailman (or another list manager)
can define list membership based on an LDAP query? And then evaluate
that query for the delivery list, dynamically for each message?

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

[ I'm forwarding a batch of messages in this thread which seem to
have vanished into the ether. -Andrew ]

Author: jwblist

On Feb 1, 2006, at 3:15 PM, Google Kreme wrote:
>>On 31 Jan 2006, at 16:55 , RichL wrote: Then I looked for an
>>internet based solution, but "Mailman" is WAY over my head, and
>>"Listapp" seemed much more complex than what I needed.
>
>Mailman can be difficult to setup, but it is a breeze to use once it
>is setup. It's all web based admin. very simple, very powerful (AIR
>Apple uses mailman to manage all it's mailing lists).

While Apple does use Mailman, it is a modified Mailman (and not the
same modified Mailman they ship with the server releases).

I haven't tried installing Mailman on Mac OS X (I administer it on a
Linux server).

--John

Author: st-tidbits

I have used the free services from all of:
http://lists.topica.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/
http://www.i-neighbors.org/
...with reasonable success, each one has particular strengths.
Letting someone else do all the work maintaining things has some
major advantages.

I run the following public lists (among others):

http://lists.topica.com/lists/palmac/ - Palm and Mac issues
http://lists.topica.com/lists/physics_jobs_l/ - job postings for
physics http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTron-Mac-Users/ - Canadian
tax software http://i-neighbors.org/V5W/JohnOliver1985class - high
school alumni group

As Adam has pointed out with the whole WebCrossing thing, it is very
nice to give subscribers web access to their subscriptions and
postings, and all of these services do that.



--
Johann Beda - contact link: http://public.xdi.org/=j-beda> *
Johann's MostlyMac Computer Consulting - http://mmcc.beda.ca/> *

Author: chucklist

>Anyone have any suggestions as to how one could easily (stress that
>word) manage a growing mail list on different platforms?? Hell, I'd
>import the list to Notes every day if I could somehow just manage it
>on my Mac. Running OS X 10.4.4 on a Dual 2 G5.
>
>Thanks for any suggestions

It sounds to me like you are asking about managing a local mail group
(meaning something "client based" on your local computer.) Mailman is
a mailing LIST manager which runs on a server. Two very different
things.

First of all I'd check to see if whomever provides your email or
internet access also provides a list service. many of today's mail
servers in use by ISPs include some list functionality.

That said, if you have access to an Internet connected machine and
can spend a bit of time to configure mailman or a similar package,
once set up it is VERY easy to manage.



--

Chuck Goolsbee V.P. Technical Operations
_________________________________________________________________
digital.forest Phone: +1-877-720-0483, x2001
where Internet solutions grow Int'l: +1-206-838-1630
*** celebrating eleven years of service 7/12/1994 - 7/12/2005 ***
12101 Tukwila International Blvd Fax: +1-206-838-3749
Suite 410 http://www.forest.net
Seattle, WA 98168 email: cgforest.net

Author: dtopcomp

Hi Rich,

I'm not totally sure of what you are seeking but here's what we do
here with a mailing list of almost 4,000 addresses from customers of
our mail-order business.

We store these in a field in FileMaker along with a calculation field
which concatenates the person's name with their email address,
formats it, and adds a comma.

Each Friday I sort these addresses by Customer Surname and export
those formatted addresses+name into a series of text files -- A-B,
C-E etc. This is a simple script within FileMaker. I then have an
AppleScript which loads that file into TextWrangler where we lop off
the last two characters (the final "," and a carriage return) then
parse this file, line by line into the Bcc field of a new message in
our email client, which happens to be MailSmith. With some mod's this
script would also work with other email clients.

This same script sets up the title of the email so all! I have to do
is cut and paste text of our e-letter into the body of the email.

For bounces, I have another script in FileMaker which takes an email
address from the clipboard, clears that email address from FileMaker
and creates a snail mail letter advising the addressee of the bounce.

For your membership of 300 this whole procedure would be a breeze --
even though it might appear cumbersome. I have found no difficulty in
having almost 700 email addresses in the Bcc field. Some ISP's may
have a limit on this number and I have found that, on occasion, an
outgoing email may fail if there were over 800 email addresses in the
Bcc field. YMMV!

Cheers,

John Wolff Hamilton, New Zealand

On Feb 2, 2006, at 9:57 PM, Andrew Laurence wrote:

> At 3:15 PM -0800 2/1/06, Google Kreme wrote:
>> Mailman can be difficult to setup, but it is a breeze to use once it
>> is setup. It's all web based admin. very simple, very powerful (AIR
>> Apple uses mailman to manage all it's mailing lists).
>
> Speaking of which, anyone know if Mailman (or another list manager)
> can define list membership based on an LDAP query? And then evaluate
> that query for the delivery list, dynamically for each message?

Mailman is learning to do that, but as of current versions, only a
mostly-working interface is part of the distribution. Modules for
LDAP, MySQL, etc access to the list membership are offered by third
parties, with some success. Search in Mailman documentation for
"member adaptor".

You're strong enough with LDAP that I suspect you could help that
effort along, if you had any "spare time". (What's that?)

In Mailman 1 and 2, a list has subscribers.

In the Mailman 3 design (release date not even hinted at publicly),
the site has people, and people have subscriptions to lists. This
orientation should make things easier for both subscribers and list
administrators. (I think someone wanting to use different addresses
for different lists at a site--perhaps home- and office-related
lists--would have to be two people as far as the Mailman site was
concerned, but I'm not sure of that.)

   --John


 

On Feb 3, 2006, at 12:57 AM, Travis Butler wrote:
> Back in the day, Fog City Software (the same people who made Emailer,
> before it was sold to Claris) had a mailing list manager called
> LetterRip that was IIRC highly regarded for ease of use. (Adam, didn't
> TidBITS run off LetterRip for a while?)
>
> I just checked and it still seems to be available, in OS X as well as
> Classic versions, now from a company called LetterRip Software.
> <http://www.letterrip.com/> They've got a 30-day demo listed.

I company I used to work for ran a number of very large mailing lists
that shipped out frequently via LetterRip, and they swore by it.

Marilyn


 

I'm not recommending maintaining your e-mail list in Notes, partially since it sounds like this is a personal list, and your Notes setup is for work...??? However, I do want to point out that Lotus Notes *IS* available on the Mac, so that is not a barrier. I use it every day on my Mac at home, and on Windows at work. No problems.

(Most folks I know would use Yahoo!Groups or something similar for what you do, I suppose.)

Kendall (Lotus Notes developer & administrator)

Sorry this may be a little OT, is there a good email blast software for the Mac?

I recently had to create graphics to use on an email blast announcement/invite for my client. My client recently added this email blast along with their regular mailing and wanted me to handle the whole job but my background is print and my web/html knowledge is basic. This would go out to anywhere from 2000 to 10,000 email addresses would contain a web version of the invite cover and doesnt have to be interactive though rollovers and multiple images might be good features for me to consider as an option.

Through Googgle, I found these links to web based version:

http://www.interspire.com/sendstudio

http://www.activecampaign.com/12all/demo.php

On Oct 6, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Bert C wrote:

> Sorry this may be a little OT, is there a good email blast software
> for the Mac?

I recently did some work with MaxBulk for a client -- it worked fine,
although you'll have to pay extra attention to making sure that plain
text and HTML both format properly.

<http://www.maxprog.com/MaxBulk.html>

Best,
Jeff

On Oct 6, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Bert C wrote:
> Sorry this may be a little OT, is there a good email blast software
> for the Mac?

I assume by "blast software" you mean software for mass mailing?
I've used Direct Mail <http://ethreesoftware.com/directmail/> and
have been happy with it. It has considerable flexibility, including
timed batches of email to avoid overloading your SMTP server.

Geoff Odhner

On Oct 6, 2006, at 11:51 AM, Bert C wrote:

> Sorry this may be a little OT, is there a good email blast software
> for the Mac?

I like DirectMail.

On Oct 6, 2006, at 2:51 PM, Bert C wrote:

> Sorry this may be a little OT, is there a good email blast software
> for the Mac?

A company I used to work for used LetterRip to manage a number of
large mailing lists, and they swore by it; however, this was a few
years ago, and it looks like the product has been sold to another
company:

http://www.letterrip.com/

If you use Pair's internet hosting service, you'll be eligible to
host a list via Mailman for free as a part of their beta mailing list
plan, and this test never seems to go out of beta. I'm probably one
of the least nerdy people on the TidBITS Talk list, and though it
took me a few hours to wrestle with Mailman, I was able to get a list
up and running in less than a day, and I didn't have to install
anything on my computer. I've got no connection to Pair other than
being a satisfied customer, and I've recommended the service to
clients over the last few years, and I haven't heard any complaints
from them:

http://www.pair.com/services/mailing_lists/

However, if you aren't going to be doing regular e-mailings, you
might want to consider using a mailing service, which will be more
cost effective. Though I haven't used either of these services
myself, I've heard nice things about them on another list, and they
have low monthly charges:

http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp

http://www.mailchimp.com/

Marilyn