SchoolsMailserver.co.uk

Notes for clients intending to send bulk emails for the first time:

Your ISP is likely to impose a limit on how many emails you can send in one mail; ie. how many bcc addresses allowed in each email. If your limit is say 20, you will have to send one email for each set of twenty schools in the 23,000 school list. In order to avoid such problems use a bulk emailer program which will send emails directly
(see GroupMail - Emailer Software).

Sending emails using Outlook: (recommended for small numbers of emails only!)
When sending bulk emails, the To: address should be an address that you own; eg. schools@mycompany.co.uk

The schools email addresses should go in the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) address field, seperated by semi colons. Doing it this way avoids sending everybody's email address to everybody else.The simplest way of achieving 2 above, is to import the email-address csv file into your Mail Reader software.
For example with Microsoft Outlook, create a new 'Address Book' called say 'schools'. Import the CSV data file into this new address book. When it comes to mapping in the fields, you only need to ensure that the 'email' field from the CSV file goes into the 'Email Address' field in the address book; it doesn't matter what happens to the other fields. In Outlook I use the 'Signatures' as the emails. Put your html email in the Signatures folder, and it can then be entered into a new mail with one click.
You also need to set up an email 'account' in Outlook set up with the correct From address, company, and Reply-address

Golden rule; test it ... by sending it to yourself 3 times.
Triple check it; You dont want to send 23,000 emails with errors in them.

To send mails: using Outlook
Create new mail in Outlook; add To: address, Subject line and 'Signature';
Click on Cc to open address book; select first 20, 50, or more addresses into Bcc field. It's possible to put in up to about 200 addresses in the Bcc field at a time, before your PC starts to groan.
Ensure mail is being sent from correct 'account'; Send.
Note that your ISP may limit the number of addresses you can include within one email.

Sending emails using bulk emailing software:
There are various software packages around to help with bulk emailing; for example. The packages below allow you to manage your sets of email addresses and will send the mails directly avoiding your ISPs mailservers.

These have free Trial versions available, and with the US Dollar where it is, are inexpensive!

Group Mail has a built in html editor for composing mails and helps manage your addresses.. You can import addresses into groups. The software will even clean up lists, removing dead email addresses.
 
MaxBulk Mailer is a full-featured and easy-to-use bulk mailer and mail-merge software for Macintosh and Windows.

Advice on sending bulk emails yourself legitimately

Email addresses supplied by us are the administratrive addresses of the school as published on their websites or by their LEA. In order to comply with the EC Directive you should:

1. Clearly identify in the email the person or company who is sending it.
2. Include in the email a method by which the recipient can remove themselves from the list and from receiving further mails; via an email or website link.
3. Remove quickly any school from your list who requests it.
4. Acknowledge to the school that they have been removed.

If a school complains to your ISP about receiving unsolicited emails; if you have the remove mechanism specified above in place and you have removed all schools who have requested it, your ISP should be satisfied.

Paul Welbank
Deepspace Web Services Ltd.
Tel: 01603 477619
Fax: 0870 7051136