Bulk emails not getting through on broadband

suebudd · 16-12-2003, 10:55

Hi from a newbie - I do admin work for a small music organisation and need to send out regular emails to members and I have 175 members' emails in a "group" in Outlook Express. I'm on NTL broadband through my set top box.

It seems that some people on the list are not receiving the emails. Does anyone have any ideas why? (I called NTL and the guy said "he didn't think there was any ban on bulk emails" which didn't exactly fill me with confidence, but when I asked him to "make sure please" he kept me holding for an age and it was costing me to wait... 2.5 p a minute, apparently... and I gave up after about ten minutes.... anyway... any help appreciated.

paulyoung666 · 16-12-2003, 11:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by suebudd

Hi from a newbie - I do admin work for a small music organisation and need to send out regular emails to members and I have 175 members' emails in a "group" in Outlook Express. I'm on NTL broadband through my set top box.

It seems that some people on the list are not receiving the emails. Does anyone have any ideas why? (I called NTL and the guy said "he didn't think there was any ban on bulk emails" which didn't exactly fill me with confidence, but when I asked him to "make sure please" he kept me holding for an age and it was costing me to wait... 2.5 p a minute, apparently... and I gave up after about ten minutes.... anyway... any help appreciated.

is it always the same members or various ones ??????????

to the site btw

**Frank** · 16-12-2003, 11:05

I would think ntl's SMTP servers would be configured to not to allow 175 e-mail addresses on one e-mail. I wuld certainly configure my e-mail server like that, preceisely to stop spammers.

Not saying you are a spammer, but sending a mail to 175 people using an Outlook list is not really (if I'm picky) a good way to do it.

A better way would be to use a piece of software especially made for this (sends 175 mails), a server side mailing list (such as mailman or majordomo), or a PHP/ASP mailing list manager solution.

suebudd · 16-12-2003, 11:07

I'm trying to find out. I suspect

1. NTL does not allow bulk emailing
2. something to do with members with .aol email addresses
3. something to do with members' with yahoo.co.uk addresses.

I've sent a test email to them all, and quite a few (9) have so far returned, but I won't know if they got it, will I, so not very scientific.

I've just emailed the ones with .aol addresses to see if they all got recent mails (or not)

(Thanks... that was a quick reply! )

(This was responding to Paulyoung666)

suebudd · 16-12-2003, 11:10

Thanks Keyser.

I'm looking into an ASP solution on the new site we are designing. In the meantime, I still need to get those emails out....

danielf · 16-12-2003, 11:10

I don't know about NTL's policy, but it may be that some of the receiving ISPs (aol and yahoo) have blacklisted NTL (or a range of NTL blocks) because of spam being sent out from these addresses.

suebudd · 16-12-2003, 11:15

Is there a lot of spamming from NTL emails then? It seems to me more comes from yahoo and hotmail... but this does sound likely.

danielf · 16-12-2003, 11:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by suebudd

Is there a lot of spamming from NTL emails then? It seems to me more comes from yahoo and hotmail... but this does sound likely.

I don't know if there is a lot, but these blacklist blockers do occasionally get things wrong as well. If this is what is happening, the only workaround I can see is to try and send the emails from another (non-NTL address).

Shaun · 16-12-2003, 11:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielf

I don't know about NTL's policy, but it may be that some of the receiving ISPs (aol and yahoo) have blacklisted NTL (or a range of NTL blocks) because of spam being sent out from these addresses.

I could send from my Ntl addy to my Yahoo.co.uk addy and back again fine until I cancelled my Ntl services last week. Many people said that they were having trouble with yahoo.co.uk and Ntl but I never encountered any

suebudd · 16-12-2003, 11:25

Were you doing bulk emailing though Dellwear?

**Frank** · 16-12-2003, 11:48

Sue try splitting them up and doing about 50 per mail. So send the same mail to 50 people at a time.

Also, do you get any bounce messages?

suebudd · 16-12-2003, 11:59

Thanks, I did think of that... however it may be quicker to just use my Freeserve connection when I need to send bulk emails... (my outlook express is not user-friendly - on a Mac - not easy to transfer a list or part of a list. Would have to enter each address manually.)

Of course... will it go through Freeserve? I think it did used to, actually, and this problem has only occurred since I joined NTL.

And no, I don't get any bounce emails!! (My address list is perfect!) I did remove one that came back as undeliverable... I wondered if that had stopped the "flow"... but am still having the same problem since then.

I'm sure NTL should be able to tell me whether they have a ban on bulk emailing, and if so how many are allowed. That would certainly help. I've emailed their help... but am not holding my breath!

I'm off to get a life now... thanks for all the help.

DrAwesome · 16-12-2003, 12:01

an easy option would be to bulk email via hotmail and add your ntl email address to the email for the reply

SMHarman · 16-12-2003, 12:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by danielf

I don't know about NTL's policy, but it may be that some of the receiving ISPs (aol and yahoo) have blacklisted NTL (or a range of NTL blocks) because of spam being sent out from these addresses.

Could be that AOL or Yahoo block mails with say 50+ people in the to field and 5+ of them as AOL accounts.

Can you send to each of them individually?

Quote:

Originally Posted by suebudd

And no, I don't get any bounce emails!! (My address list is perfect!) I did remove one that came back as undeliverable... I wondered if that had stopped the "flow"... but am still having the same problem since then.

I see you can...

Quote:

Originally Posted by suebudd

Thanks, I did think of that... however it may be quicker to just use my Freeserve connection when I need to send bulk emails... (my outlook express is not user-friendly - on a Mac - not easy to transfer a list or part of a list. Would have to enter each address manually.)

If you have the sent mail in your outbox and hit forward, the list of names and mail addresses will move into the body text and you can cut and paste (or whatever the mac terms are) them into a new mail.

However for one e-mail a while it may just be better to use freeserve and have a freeserve mail profile set, you can always set the reply adress to your ntl one so you get the replies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suebudd

I'm off to get a life now... thanks for all the help.

**Frank** · 16-12-2003, 12:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by SMHarman

LOL. Women mate