Sending email to multiple addresses - help please!

Charlton_King

I'm sure this is a much repeated question but I'd be grateful for a simple answer, nevertheless.

I've just become the minuting secretary for a society and will need to send the same email to each member (c40 of them) on a regular basis. This is something I've never done before. How do I go about it?

For clarity, my email account is on outlook.com.

agrinnall

If outlook.com allows you to then setting up a distribution group is probably the easiest way. I haven't done it myself but this post suggests it's possible:

http://www.entrecomputer.com/blog/?p=250

Sue.D.Nim

Hi, you should set these people up as a group in outlook.com

Click the down arrow next to 'outlook.com' in the top left.

Choose 'People'

Along the top, click the down arrow next to 'new'

Choose 'New group'

Add everyone

You should then be able to send emails to this group

Farway

Be sure to select the BCC [blind courtesy copy] option if there is one, this prevent the recipients mail address being splashed to spammers far & wide

yangptangkipperbang

Farway wrote: »

Be sure to select the BCC [blind [STRIKE]courtesy[/STRIKE] copy] option if there is one, this prevent the recipients mail address being splashed to spammers far & wide

.........carbon.....

macman

Some ISPs limit the no. of cc's or bcc's you can send, as an anti-spam measure. With BT, it used to be around 25? If that is an issue, you may need to create more than one mailing group to get around this limitation. Suggest you check with your ISP.
You could also use the Entrepeneur version of Mailchimp for free.

Tiexen

Another vote for Mailchimp up to 2000 emails a month free.

johnmc

If you have MS Office you can create a list in Excel and use Word to mail merge.

This has the advantage that you can change the list or the text at any point and even personalise it.

superscaper

yangptangkipperbang wrote: »

.........[STRIKE]carbon[/STRIKE].....

courtesy

Either is considered "proper", dictionary def. has courtesy over dropping carbon because it's too much of a skeumorphism for email. But in business language (at least in my experience) I've seen it termed courtesy copy for the last 20 years. No matter what your preference, neither is actually incorrect.

macman

I don't suppose anyone much under 30 knows what a 'carbon copy' is anyway.

InsideInsurance

how you should do it exactly depends on if the members know each others email address/ should know them etc.

For a normal business you would simply put all the email addresses in the To line separated by a , or ; depending on the application (most accept either these days). As others have said the advantage/ disadvantage is that everyone gets the same email and can see all the email addresses so it has to be addressed to "all" etc

If you are happy for them all to get a generic email but want to conceal the email address from each other then you use the BCC field instead of the To field and otherwise do the same. That way its still addressed to all but no one can see the full list of recipients and they can only directly reply to yourself.

If you want a more personalised email, ie you address the person its sent to by name rather than a generic then you need to do a mail merge. I dont know if the outlook.com web client supports mail merge or not.

A mailing list is the same as the first option but just saves you having to copy/paste the full name list in each time.