I AM TRYING TO SEND A MESSAGE TO A LARGE GROUP OF PEOPLE IN MY ADDRESS BOOK

T

thesugitap

Hi,
I am trying to run a mailing list of 62,000 fans for a band. We have
been using a gmail account linked up to entourage. I can send single
emails successfully via entourage now, but if I try to send a message
to a group of 500 fans (i have them blocked off into groups of 500 b/c
that is the max gmail will allow to be sent at once) then I recieve a
SYNTAX ERROR notice such as
- Syntax error e14sm3054429qba . and then the description says "Mail
could not be sent" . "Acount name "gmail". Can anyone help me out? I
am really really struggling with getting this thing up and running.
Thanks for your time!

Samantha
 
B

Barry Wainwright [MVP]

Hi,
I am trying to run a mailing list of 62,000 fans for a band. We have
been using a gmail account linked up to entourage. I can send single
emails successfully via entourage now, but if I try to send a message
to a group of 500 fans (i have them blocked off into groups of 500 b/c
that is the max gmail will allow to be sent at once) then I recieve a
SYNTAX ERROR notice such as
- Syntax error e14sm3054429qba . and then the description says "Mail
could not be sent" . "Acount name "gmail". Can anyone help me out? I
am really really struggling with getting this thing up and running.
Thanks for your time!

Samantha
Click to expand...

Probably one of the addresses in that group has a typo - maybe an extra
space in the address.

All you can do is go through the group and check each entry.

For mailing lists this size, entourage really isn't the best solution - you
should try a dedicated mail list manager such as macjordomo:

<http://macjordomo.med.cornell.edu/>
 
S

Scott

Samantha, as Barry also noted, Entourage isn't the best solution for
mass mailings. A few months ago, I was introduced to MaxBulk Mailer for
sending out weekly newsletters to a 1200 name database. I love it.
Takes 2 seconds to copy over any amount of email addresses to MaxBulk,
and you can save any message and any particular group of emails. It has
a lot of extra features that I'm finding helpful. We still use
Entourage for the day to day stuff, but MaxBulk rocks. Check it out
over at http://www.versiontracker.com.
 
A

Allen Watson

Hi,
I am trying to run a mailing list of 62,000 fans for a band. We have
been using a gmail account linked up to entourage. I can send single
emails successfully via entourage now, but if I try to send a message
to a group of 500 fans (i have them blocked off into groups of 500 b/c
that is the max gmail will allow to be sent at once) then I recieve a
SYNTAX ERROR notice such as
- Syntax error e14sm3054429qba . and then the description says "Mail
could not be sent" . "Acount name "gmail". Can anyone help me out? I
am really really struggling with getting this thing up and running.
Thanks for your time!

Samantha
Click to expand...
One major pain in the neck about sending to large groups at once, like 500
in a message, is that a syntax error in a single address will cause the
entire message to be rejected. You then have to open the message, scroll
through all the recipients, and look for one with an error icon next to it.
Really unworkable.

There is a freeware mailing list server called Macjordomo that is excellent.
I used it for groups of a few thousand. It takes some getting used to, but
the gist of it is this:

You create a text file that contains all the addresses you want to send to,
any number, one per line. It's fairly easy to export these from Entourage as
needed.

You create two dummy mail accounts on your e-mail server (most ISPs let you
have five or more e-mail addresses). One of them is your "mailing list"
address.

You set up Macjordomo so it recognizes your mailing list address.

When you want to send a message, you update the address list if necessary,
and send your message to the mailing list address. You then activate
Macjordomo, which sees the message waiting on the server, reads your address
list and uploads it to the remote server, and then remotely instructs the
mail server at your ISP to send individual messages to everyone on the list!
It's magical.
 
Top