Best way to email over 100 people...
I recently got the responsibility of sending out the email to members of an organization. We have around 150 members and I need to send everyone an email with announcements, files and such.
The problem is, I don't want everyone's email address in the "to" field and I want it to look like I sent each one of them a personal email. I have the 150 emails saved in a text file, excel file, etc. so I can easily call upon a file if I need to in order to send the email.
Anyone have any suggestions because I am fairly certain Mail.app doesn't allow to email from a text file and supress the email addresses from all the recepients like I want to do. Unless I am wrong??
TIA
The problem is, I don't want everyone's email address in the "to" field and I want it to look like I sent each one of them a personal email. I have the 150 emails saved in a text file, excel file, etc. so I can easily call upon a file if I need to in order to send the email.
Anyone have any suggestions because I am fairly certain Mail.app doesn't allow to email from a text file and supress the email addresses from all the recepients like I want to do. Unless I am wrong??
TIA
Comments
In Mail preferences, 'Composing' make sure 'When sending to a group ...' is unchecked.
Also, put the addresses in the BC (blind copy) box. Addresses cannot be viewed.
I honestly have not used Automator as much as I probably should so I don't know how to go about it.
http://www.emailarms.com/products/bulk_mac_mail.html
Anyone have any suggestions because I am fairly certain Mail.app doesn't allow to email from a text file and supress the email addresses from all the recepients like I want to do. Unless I am wrong??
In Mail preferences, 'Composing' make sure 'When sending to a group ...' is unchecked.
Also, put the addresses in the BC (blind copy) box. Addresses cannot be viewed.
The first does not work... I sent a sample email to 2 of my email addresses using this option, and I was able to see the other recipient with it.
Second, with this, he would not be able to say something like 'Hello John' to get more personalization as he is wishing.
Could you use Automator to do it?
I honestly have not used Automator as much as I probably should so I don't know how to go about it.
I screwed around in automator for about an hour and a half trying to figure this out and I go close... but kept getting an error message. Apple help for Automator is very lacking.
This is what I did and I think I got close:
1 dragged a directory in from Addressbook that I wanted to send to
2 'group mail'
3 'get specified mail item' and select a draft with the attatchments/text/subject I want
4 'send outgoing messages'
Then the error I got was something like 'no outgoing messages'. And after extensive searching I still have no clue what makes something fit the criteria of an 'outgoing message'.
The best way to do this is to get some mailing list software. There are a number of different versions. I bet that there are online services that will even host them for you.
That was my first thought as well. However, a mailing list is rather impersonal, and the OP requested that the emails appear personal.
If you have any programming experience at all, both Python and PHP have pretty simply mail-writing functions. One could write a PHP or Python script that inputs a text file with the emails on each line and another text file with the email body and stitches the two together with a header or a footer.
New Mail Message - compose you message here with Subject etc. leaving room at the top for the salutation
Find Groups in Address Book - select your group to mail to here
Group Mailer - set up personalized salutation here
Send Outgoing Message - Send.
I've used this many times.
If all you want to personalize is the greeting - Dear XXXX - then Automator is quick and easy. The steps are
New Mail Message - compose you message here with Subject etc. leaving room at the top for the salutation
Find Groups in Address Book - select your group to mail to here
Group Mailer - set up personalized salutation here
Send Outgoing Message - Send.
I've used this many times.
How does this work?
1 and 2 don't go together.
1 outputs a Mail Message and 2 inputs Address Book groups.
How does this work?
1 and 2 don't go together.
1 outputs a Mail Message and 2 inputs Address Book groups.
Group Mailer works on the front-most message. The message is not passed within the Automator script. This is the very strange part of Group Mailer.
It has some other quirks, but work.
1) It leaves the initial message created by New Mail up. You have to close it
2) It creates all of the outgoing messages and then sends them. This means that if you have 200 recipients you'll have 200 messages on your screen at one point. I've done as many at 900 and it works. Not instantaneous but it works.
You can leave off the New Mail step and just compose in Mail and leave it as the front most. I think this was the intention if you put the automator script in the mail scripts but I haven't figured out how to do that.
When I say personalize, I just meant not having all the addresses in the header. I am not going to do Dear XYZ.
Also, I do not want to add these people to my address book because that would take forever and I am just not.
Automater sounds great, I wish it could parse text files for email addresses. I am no programmer but I do have some small VB experience from college. Small experience. I am just trying to come up with an easy way of emailing our club without posting everyone's email in the header. 150 emails is a lot to send to, for me at least.
Thoughts?
How hard would this be to do in applescript with a comma delimeted text file?
Thanks for all the replies but let me clear up a few things I was not clear about.
When I say personalize, I just meant not having all the addresses in the header. I am not going to do Dear XYZ.
Also, I do not want to add these people to my address book because that would take forever and I am just not.
Automater sounds great, I wish it could parse text files for email addresses. I am no programmer but I do have some small VB experience from college. Small experience. I am just trying to come up with an easy way of emailing our club without posting everyone's email in the header. 150 emails is a lot to send to, for me at least.
Thoughts?
How hard would this be to do in applescript with a comma delimeted text file?
Oh... then this is much easier than I thought. You have all the email addresses in a text file right? One to each line? Just select all, copy, go to the message and paste into Bcc. Bam.
Thanks for all the replies but let me clear up a few things I was not clear about.
When I say personalize, I just meant not having all the addresses in the header. I am not going to do Dear XYZ.
Also, I do not want to add these people to my address book because that would take forever and I am just not.
Automater sounds great, I wish it could parse text files for email addresses. I am no programmer but I do have some small VB experience from college. Small experience. I am just trying to come up with an easy way of emailing our club without posting everyone's email in the header. 150 emails is a lot to send to, for me at least.
Thoughts?
How hard would this be to do in applescript with a comma delimeted text file?
The applescript is not that hard but consider the following. I know you don't want to add them to the address book but is that because of the work required or having them there? If the former remember that Addressbook can import a text file and may be able to do the parsing for you.
Thanks people!! You 'da best dudes ever!!
You can get 60 days free to try it out. It's $15 a month, but well worth the price. If you're interested, I can send you a PM with a referral code.
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