email list management

June 18, 2005 12:19 PM

I need a email list management service for a nonprofit that is free or nearly so. Needs to do bulk emails but it won't be spam, its to notify of special events in their interests that are usually fundraisers we need volunteers and people to donate for.

I will ask potential members to subscribe from our website, and there should be well over a thousand. We will drive supporters to our website to further engage with them.
I will be asking for and capturing visitors email addresses through the website.
Integration of new subscriber to the list is a must.
I hope for:
to have a personalized to: and from: entries in our mass emails.
Store and manage thousands of email addresses
from/to line is personalized
Bonus:
HTML email generation
Mass list import/export
ensuring email delivery / not being tagged as spam
Count on strong spam policies and subscription tools to ensure that emails get delivered
Measure outreach effectiveness with delivery and click-through reports
Integration capability with donation by credit card acceptance service(future)
I've come across these but info / opinions are needed:
Mailman, Eudora, Worldcast, eNewsletter,
GroupMailer ( glhsoftware.com ),
PIMEX MailExpress 1.0, Direct Mail 1.4.3, TurboMailer 2.2.2
Advice greatly appreciated, I'm new at this!

posted by uni verse to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

check out mailermailer.com
fairly inexpensive: prob. $30/mo
a little clunky but easy to use.
posted by lois1950 at 12:33 PM on June 18, 2005

If you're looking for free and you're willing to have someone else's advertising in the list, try groups.yahoo.com. (At least I think they still insert text ads into your mailouts - but I could be wrong. That was about a year or so ago.)
posted by Fozzie at 12:44 PM on June 18, 2005

I haven't used it myself, but I've heard good things about Democracy in Action. They're a fairly new organization and still building out their services, but might be worth looking into.
posted by hwickline at 1:44 PM on June 18, 2005

I used Dadamail to much success; you will need to have CGI-ability on your site.

Worth looking into; it's feature-rich and free.
posted by Remy at 2:10 PM on June 18, 2005

i second the recommendation of Dadamail! Great stuff!
posted by bluno at 2:25 PM on June 18, 2005

I've used Sympa in the past with fairly good results. It doesn't look all that pretty, but it's functional and free.
posted by purephase at 2:33 PM on June 18, 2005

I like PHPlist.
posted by waldo at 7:24 PM on June 18, 2005

I can recommend giving Campaign Monitor a try, it doesn't include the donation feature you mentioned, but does everything else. There's nothing to set up and the interface is so easy to work with.
posted by grimey at 2:49 AM on June 20, 2005