How to send out legitimate mail shots without being branded a spammer?

usignuolo

My OH runs a small one man business which involves him teaching and organising events for people with a common interest in a "mind" sport. Let us say, for the argument, it is backgammon (it isn't but will do). He is a qualified coach and runs teaching weekends and tournaments.

It doesn't make much but enough to keep him solvent. He maintains a mailing list of everyone who has been on one of his courses, who has signed up to hear about his events and everyone who has been to an event who has signed up to hear about future ones. The list now has around 450 names.

He has a small business account with Pipex for which he pays I think 180pds annually. Just lately they have taken to blocking any mail out he sends of more than around 25 names as potential spam. (Which is ironic as they don't out block the russian spammers who keep spoofing my name and so my mail box is full of pages and pages of bounced emails).

It is impossible to communicate with them directly - so many bits of the original Telewest is now owned by so many different companies. All he has managed to get is a suggestion he upgrade to a more expensive business account with no guarantee how many mail outs he can send.

He has currently got the mailing list sub divided into groups of 30 but even so there seems to be a limit of no more than 300 emails per day in total which includes each name in a mailout.

There must be service providers who recognise legitimate businesses who need to email their customer base, or even clubs with a large membership. Can anyone help with some suggestions?

mr-mr_2

For your email any one of:

www.rackspace.com Email Apps
www.polarismail.com

For email mailing: mailchimp (google it) or something similar. May be polarismail can do something for you?

paddyrg

Try a specialist service like constantcontact.com or icontact.com - they are whitelisted and they help you maintain a proper opt out database etc. Don't bother with any PC based software or non- specialist service, better to do it properly with all the statistics and legal opt out stuff than have your emails/ address blocked as spam and never knowing.

Edit to add... Those services also help you build attractive ( ish) newsletters and give you advice on how to get the message through and things like good subject lines to increase the read rate