Email blasts with seperate reply-to

April 6, 2015 7:46 PM

We want to send email blasts to our staff that have a different reply-to email but also doesn't have Unsubscribe buttons like a normal mailing list. Is there a free service we could use that does that, or is there also maybe something we're missing?

A summer camp I work for has a catch-all [e-mail] email that forwards to the professional camp director's email (which is at the main nonprofit's domain). We want to use that director email to send out email blasts to our seasonal staff (~80 people), but we want any replies to go to a different email so he doesn't get spammed with every email regarding employment paperwork/questions/etc. It seems like it'd be a simple reply-to thing, but the catch is the email address is through ProMail and it doesn't look like they have that option. Is there something we can do or a service we can use to email the whole group, use a different reply-to, and not have those Unsubscribe type footers?

posted by Deflagro to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Does ProMail let you use external email clients? Most let you configure a separate reply-to. You could set it up solely for the purposes of sending out these messages and leave it alone the rest of the time. Alternatively, in your shoes, I'd probably just send the email from the address you want replied-to. It may not be as elegant, but it will work (and I'd suggest that if people would be confused or put off by that, they might be similarly confused by their replies going to a different email address).
posted by primethyme at 8:06 PM on April 6, 2015

Agree with primethyme; if you're talking about services, they're all going to require unsubscribe footers, because what you're talking about has a lot of potential to be really spammy in certain situations.

Think about it this way: why are you worried about unsubscribes? Presumably if these people want to continue to work at your summer camp, they're not going to unsubscribe.

So if you give up on your requirement that you not include an unsubscribe footer, really any ESP worth a damn will work for this.

If you're not willing to give up on that, just send from the email you want the replies to go to or use an external mail client. "Reply-To" is not some magical feature that needs to be enabled by your email provider, it's just a header that can be sent along from and to any email service.
posted by toomuchpete at 8:12 PM on April 6, 2015

One of our concerns being a nonprofit and a summer camp was having a professional image and we assumed having the Unsubscribe type footers would look tacky (which we may be off on this). So that's why we want our employment information emails (which would later also include their actual contracts) to come from our director email while any questions would be going to my personal gmail account which they have previously emailed with setting up interviews.

I'll check out the external mail client. That's not something we had considered!
posted by Deflagro at 8:51 PM on April 6, 2015

Not allowing someone to unsubscribe from emails = unprofessional, not the other way around.
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:53 PM on April 6, 2015

Not to threadsit, but Hermione, this may not have come across, but these emails are to employees who have already accepted positions and are one or two-time emails with details regarding their employment. These aren't recruitment emails or newsletters.
posted by Deflagro at 8:58 PM on April 6, 2015

Just my opinion, but reply-tos set to some gmail account (even if it's one I've seen before) is much odder and less professional looking than an unsubscribe link. Can you set up another mailbox in the main domain for this? I think it would project a much more professional image.
posted by primethyme at 9:15 PM on April 6, 2015

Just shove the unsubscribe list required by a service like Mailchimp in small print at the bottom of the footer, with a note like "[link]Unsubscribe[link]. Please note that this mailing list is required for all staff of NonProfitName. Contact OfficialEmail if you have received this email in error."

Mailchimp can notify you if someone unsubscribes, and you can follow up to see if it's an accidental unsub or a staff who has quit etc.

You can also set it so emails come from one address and replies can be handled by another person. Two staff at my place handle the conversations on mailing lists through Mailchimp.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:50 PM on April 6, 2015

Mailchimp is your friend for this -- and it's free for the size of the group you're emailing to. I use it for my widget group and it has various settings for reply-to and from emails.

Plus it has a ton of templates with the built-in unsubscribe element, so you can just set up your text/newsletter and away you go.
posted by vickyverky at 8:08 AM on April 7, 2015

Hmm. If these aren't email blasts or staff newsletters, I probably wouldn't worry about MailChimp, that might be overkill.

Can you set up a secondary email address "for the director," like firstname.lastname@ instead of director@, and use that to send the emails?
posted by radioamy at 10:04 AM on April 7, 2015

Looks like Mozilla Thunderbird is gonna work for what we need and the bossman is happy!
posted by Deflagro at 4:27 PM on April 7, 2015