subject: Tips On How To Send Bulk Email From Mac [print this page] There are two different ways of sending bulk email from a Mac computer. But before talking about how to do it, I would like to spend some time on explaining what bulk email is and what it isn't. Because, it looks like many people are mistaking bulk mail for spam.
Bulk email vs spam
To distinguish between spam and normal bulk email, you need to understand what spam is; spam is always an advertisement or a scam of some sort, it's always unsolicited, and you can't unsubscribe from it. As opposed to spam, normal bulk email is never sent without subscriber's consent. People choose to subscribe to a mailing list and can remove themselves from the list if they want to. Good bulk email messages rarely advertise something directly. Instead, they provide subscribers with useful information, and notify them about special offers, and discounts.
Normal bulk email messages give benefits to both receivers and senders, and the receiver usually benefits the most. Spam is always beneficial for sender, and is most likely a trap for the receiver.
Top 5 things to know about bulk email sending
Now let's talk about how to send bulk email Mac offers 2 ways of sending bulk messages, you can send them using Mac Mail or a mass mailer for Mac. Before going ahead, pay attention to several extremely important things. You should:
1. Store email list somewhere on your Mac computer.
2. Add and remove subscribers from your email list on a regular basis.
3. Have the ability to import your existing customers to your email list.
4. Have the ability to deliver a large number of messages efficiently.
5. Make sure you are not exposing all list members in your messages.
All the 5 conditions have to be met , no matter which way to send bulk email messages you choose.
How to use Mac Mail to send bulk email
So the first option you have is 100% free, and readily available without installation of any third-party software products. You can use Mac Mail to send bulk email to small lists of up to several hundred people. And here is how you can do it:
1. Open up Address Book and import your existing mailing list using the File--Import menu item.
2. Create a group in Address Book for this mailing list by pressing the [+] button which is below groups.
3. Select the Last Import group in Address Book, select all people there and drag&drop them to the new group.
4. Select the new group then add other people that were not on file using the [+] button below the list of people.
5. Start Mac Mail then create a new message by pressing the New Message button.
6. Click on the Address Book button located on top of the message editor that displays your new message.
7. In the Address Book picker, select the group in which you imported your list, and select all people in it.
8. Click the "Bcc:" button on the toolbar of the Address Book picker, to add all selected people to the "BCC" list of your new message.
9. Compose your bulk message, and after that click on the Send button within the message editor to send it out.
10. Immediately the message is going to be sent to your email server for delivery.
When you send bulk email Mac Mail will simply send the entire message with email list to your mail server. It does not mean that the message will immediately pop up in mailboxes of your subscribers. It will take a considerable amount of time on the server side to create separate messages and forward them to recipient's mailboxes. This is exactly what happens.
Pros of Mac Mail:
+ 100% free.
+ Already ready to be used.
+ Do not need set up anything.
+ Works well for small email lists.
Cons of Mac Mail:
- Not easy to maintain large email lists in Apple Address Book.
- Address Book import is inconvenient and time-consuming.
- Subscription and unsubscription can't be automated.
- Automatic removal of faulty addresses is not possible.
- Can not work for large mailing lists greater than several hundred subscribers.
- Bulk messages can't be personalized.
- Impossible to reference personal information in bulk messages.
Using MacMassMailer for sending bulk email
The second option is to use any good third-party mass mailer for Mac to send bulk email messages. Before you can proceed with this option, you'll need to buy a good mass mailer. Mass mailers are not expensive, and you can get one for less than a hundred dollars.
I send my bulk email using MacMassMailer. In the past I tried other mass mailers, and after spending hours of my time on testing them all, I chose MacMassMailer. So MacMassMailer is my best choice.
Now, I'll give you some steps on how to send bulk email with MacMassMailer.
1. Download and set up MacMassMailer from http://www.macmassmailer.com
2. Launch MacMassMailer the first time, and New Email List wizard will appear.
3. Follow the steps of the New Email List wizard to create a new dummy email list.
4. Enter a title of a new recipient group, your FROM name and FROM email address.
5. Insert one email address to this group (you can add your own address for testing).
6. Input other details this wizard requests (refer to help for more details).
7. Create your bulk email message.
8. Enter outbound SMTP settings (the identical settings you use in Mac Mail).
9. As soon as New Email List wizard finishes, you can import your current subscribers.
10. To import, click the Import button, then follow the steps of Import wizard.
11. Now you can press the Start button to deliver messages to your recipients.
12. It's going to take some time to deliver your messages, look at the progress bar.
Pros of MacMassMailer:
+ Easy to install, set up and use.
+ Works quite well for big and extra large email lists.
+ Easy to manage big email lists of up to 1 million people each.
+ Fantastic Import that lets your import people from any software and files.
+ Subscription and unsubscription is totally automated.
+ Automatically eliminates faulty addresses using bounce backs.
+ Your bulk messages can be easily personalized using templates.
+ You can mention any personal details in your bulk messages.
+ Email list files are portable, and you can bring them with you.
+ Multiple SMTP accounts are supported to boost the number of messages you can send daily.
Cons of MacMassMailer:
- Costs $97, which is a bit high (however usability compensates it).
- No other cons.
Therefore if you need to send bulk email MacMassMailer is the best choice, and you should seriously consider buying a copy of it for yourself, even if your list is still small. You will have to buy it anyway later once your email list gets out of control, and believe me, sooner or later it will, and you'll have to export/import your list users again.
It's dangerous to send bulk email using Mac Mail. One simple mistake can expose your entire mailing list, if you by chance press a wrong button ("To" or "CC" instead of "BCC"). Never do that, if you use Mac Mail, don't relax! It is considered to be violation of personal privacy.
This won't happen, if you use MacMassMailer. MacMassMailer generates separate messages for your recipients, and every message has only one address in "To".
In case of Mac Mail, you keep your email lists in Apple Address Book, and because of that every time subscribers join and leave your lists, you have to manually add and remove them. Also, Address Book does not remove dead addresses automatically, so every time you get those, you have to manually delete them.
MacMassMailer does it automatically. From time to time MacMassMailer checks your website for requests to subscribe and unsubscribe, and if there are any, updates your email list in an automatic way. It also automatically removes people with bad email addresses from your email lists.
