Problem with mass mailing in Thunderbird
I am trying to do a mass mailing in Thunderbird to about 2015 libraries, with another one to come. I followed all the instructions carefully and generated all the messages and they went into my outbox, with a "send later" command. Then this morning I entered the command to empty the outbox. I immediately began getting an error message that I could only send 50 messages an hour. Feeling like the sorcerer's apprentice, I closed thunderbird, whcih stopped the bleeding. Now I have 1350 messages in the outbox which thunderbird did not try to send.
Fixing up this mess is going to be complicated, particularly with respect to the messages it did try and fail to send (about 750 of them.) But I could make some real progress if I could figure out how to send 50 of the unset messages at a time from the outbox. I have the first 50 out of the 1350 selected right now, but I can't figure out how to get them sent. HELP! Thanks in advance.
All Replies (5)
Most likely your email provider limits the no. of messages you can send within a certain time. You should talk to your email provider.
If you have 50 set for 'send later', you can use the File>send unsent messages command.
OK, I misspoke. The limit, imposed by my domain, is 500, not 50. However, because of the way the mass mailings are set up in thunderbird, there are now 1347 messages in my outbox waiting for a send command. If I try to send them all at once again, using the command you indicated, I'll generate another swarm of error messges. It would be a great help if I could find a way to send them in batches of 500. Thanks in advance.
Fundamentally Thunderbird, or any mail client, is not a mass mailer. Doing so on a hosted domain will most likely result in one of two things.
1. You will violate the terms of service of the hosting service and they will delete the domain 2. You will be placed on a blacklist as a spammer.
This latter will probably result in most of your recipients simply not receiving mail from you in the future as their provider will be looking at the blacklists and refuse mail from your domain.
While unsolicited email is legal in the USA, most countries in the world have far more direct approach to bulk email. In my country you must first have received permission from your contact to receive marketing email otherwise the government is more than capable and happy to fine you large amount of money. The EU have privacy laws that seriously control the use of personal information (email address) for marketing and commercial activities.
While the Thunderbird project makes Thunderbird they use the services of mailchimp for their bulk mailing needs. https://mailchimp.com/?currency=AUD That is not a recommendation of the service, there are lots of providers in the market. It is just an example to underline my point that Thunderbird is not the appropriate tool for the job you are trying to do in sending bulk mail.
Well said, Matt. And even Mailchimp and others can't protect one completely. I once did mailings for a legitimate government mailing where subscribers had all done two-step subscriptions, yet still had half my recipients denied messages for five months while Mailchimp helped me through that minefield of ISPs.