E-mailing Thousands of People at Once

This article is from the April 2010 issue of KC Stage Magazine.

So you’re looking for a way to e-mail hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people at once — perhaps to send e-newsletters, updates, or donation appeals. There’s a whole class of software intended just for this purpose— called broadcast e-mail, blast e-mail, or e-mail marketing software, including options like Vertical Response and Network for Good’s E-mail Now.

These types of software are designed to let you e-mail a group of people all at once — as many as you want. They also help you create attractive emails (often through graphic templates), manage e-mail address lists, and let people subscribe and unsubscribe by themselves. In addition, more advanced tools help you collect e-mail addresses on your website, “mail-merge” information into emails, send to particular segments of your mailing list by demographics, and report on how many recipients opened or clicked on each e-mail.

If you e-mail more than a few dozen people at a time, make sure to use an off-site, generally online, vendor that supports mass emails. Tools like Outlook aren’t designed to support large-scale mailings, and won’t help with the formatting and list management tasks critical for large lists. When you use them to e-mail hundreds of people, you may reach more spam filters than inboxes — or worse, your mail server might be blacklisted as spam, blocking any future e-mail from anyone in your organization.

Vertical Response is a good option for online broadcast e-mail, offering nonprofits a sophisticated feature-set and up to 10,000 emails for free. Network for Good’s E-mail Now, is also feature-rich and attractive at about $30 per month for up to 20,000 emails. Other options include Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, Topica, MailChimp and iContact. WhatCounts provides compelling premium services targeted at those sending hundreds of thousands of emails a month.

Note that many Donor Management, Constituent Relationship Management systems and Integrated Online Systems provide some broadcast e-mail functionality. While few can match the advanced features of dedicated software, you may find that your existing software meets your needs.

Idealware, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, provides impartial information to help nonprofits choose software and has more resources about online survey tools. For a more detailed look at available tools for broadcast emails visit www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_email_newsletter_tools.php.