Mailing Lists

Finding The Best Anti Spam Solutions

2006-09-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

By: Oliver Turner

Before you start finding the best anti spam solutions, there are some simple steps that you will have to take care in order to avoid spam. Make sure that you share your email ID with only those whom you know well. For other services, make use of email services that are web based. Beware of spam bots. They are programs that are made to accumulate the email IDs throughout the net for preparing a mailing list. This list is used to send all unsolicited mails to users. Try to use the form of email that do not does not display your address in the webpage code. Install various kinds of anti-virus and other anti-spyware programs. Keep updating the version frequently. Email configuration should be done to disable the features that identify an email while you are downloading some images.

Easy Anti Spam Solutions at your Service

Now that you have taken all the basic precautionary measures, it is time to look for the program oriented anti spam filters. You can use the SpamPal identifies the well known spammers with the help of spam blacklists. eXpurgate, requiring two different email IDs, works well in filtering spam. POPFile are very effective in categorizing and separating the unsolicited mails from the personal messages. For POP accounts, Death2Spam is extremely effective. MailWasher Pro is secure and a time-saving spam filter that also protect your computer from viruses. Some of the other effective spam filters include Spam Bully, Spam Inspector, and Zaep. Another effective spam filter is the Spamihilator that takes the help of Bayesian filters to protect the email accounts.

You can even block the spam with the help of spam blockers. Anti spam for outlook includes Spam Bully that keeps your inbox free of spam. They work with Bayesian Spam Filter that makes use of artificial intelligence along with server blacklists to filter in only the wanted mails. They often put forth a password to be typed in correctly by unfamiliar sender so as to allow that mail into your inbox. Some of them are pre programmed where the know spammers are inserted. They accordingly block them. Some of the programs filter the emails based on the keywords used in the mails. Some of the email spam filters are configured and can be easily customized. Thus, with some basic knowledge about spam and the anti spam software, you can easily find the best anti spam solutions.

We offer the best anti spam solutions. Find it only on the spam blockers source. All about spam blockers on LeanderNet - www.leandernet.com

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Email Marketing: 15 List Building Tips

2006-09-11T21:05:00.000-07:00

Email marketing can be profitable for any business, no matter what kind of product or service you are selling. It is significantly cheaper than other advertising methods and it enables you to build credibility with your subscribers. As a result, you can generate more sales and profits.

The foundation of email marketing is a targeted, responsive and permission-based email list. If you have a list of subscribers that trust you and consider you to be an expert in the field of your interest, you are on the right track.

Below you will several list building ideas that will help you make the most out of your email marketing.

1. Provide useful, relevant and unique content. Your visitors will not give you their email address just because they can subscribe to your newsletter free of charge. You have to provide unique and valuable information that will be useful for your subscribers.

2. Add a subscription form to every page of your website. Make it elegant and accessible. Locate it at the top-left corner of your site, as that’s where the human eye will initially travel.

3. Make the sign up process as easy as possible. You shouldn’t ask for too much information upfront, because you will lose subscribers. Collecting just the name and email address should be enough for most email marketing campaigns.

4. Address your visitors’ privacy concerns. Most people are worried that they will receive spam after giving out their email address. Tell your potential subscribers that you respect their privacy and link this statement to a privacy policy page.

5. Show an example issue to your visitors. This lets your potential subscribers review your newsletter before they sign up and determine if it is something they’d be interested in.

6. Create a web-based newsletter repository. By putting an archive of all of your newsletter issues you can make it more appealing for your visitors to subscribe. You will also generate additional traffic from search engines.

7. Contact other newsletter publishers. Let them know that you’d be interested to announce their newsletter if they’re up to do the same for you. This way, both of you can build your lists faster.

8. Give away useful free stuff. Write an ebook or a PDF report. Hire a programmer to create downloadable or web-based software. Then give it away to your visitors provided that they join your list.

9. Request that your subscribers pass it on. Word of mouth is a powerful viral technique that works great with email marketing. If your subscribers find the content you share with them to be useful and informative, they will pass your newsletter on to their friends. This can be a good source of new subscribers.

10. Let others reprint your newsletter, as long as its content is unmodified. Many webmasters and newsletter publishers are actively looking for high quality content, and if they reprint your newsletter, you will get new subscribers, traffic and links pointing to your site.

11. Include a "Sign Up" button in the newsletter. If you are using plain text instead of HTML, provide a text link to your subscription page. You may feel that this is not required, because the subscriber is already on your list, but remember that your readers will forward your newsletters to others, or reprint it online. You want to make it easy for them to subscribe.

12. Add a squeeze page. A squeeze page is typically designed only to build your list. It features a powerful headline and a couple of most important benefits that should make your subscribers salivate to sign up to your list. Once created, use a service such as WordTracker to find hundreds targeted keywords, and advertise on them using pay per click advertising on Google, MSN and Yahoo.

13. Include testimonials in your squeeze page. This is crucial. Put 1 or 2 strong testimonials from satisfied subscribers on your squeeze page. This can be in any format, but you may find that multimedia (audio or video social proof) is more “believable”. People like to follow footsteps of other people.

14. Blog religiously. Blogging is a great way to communicate with your potential customers, and it creates a nice synergy with your email marketing. Be sure to include your newsletter sign up form on each page of your blog.

15. Use co-registration service to build your list. Co-registration is a great way to build your email list. Your newsletter’s ad appears on other website’s and their visitors are able to check your subscription box and become added to your list. A good co-registration service can be found at GetSubscribers.com.

Simon Grabowski is an owner of the web-based GetResponse email marketing software that makes it easy for thousands of marketers and small businesses to send their newsletters and build their email lists. Try GetResponse free of charge at http://www.getresponse.com

Simon Grabowski is the CEO/owner of the web-based GetResponse email marketing software that makes it easy for thousands of marketers and small businesses to send their newsletters and build their email lists. Try GetResponse free of charge at www.getresponse.com
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What is the Best Kept Secret of Internet Marketing? (And it is NOT Your Mailing List)

2006-09-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

By: Wyatt Lee

There is one very interesting aspect about the Internet: it is possible for you to make big money from the net in the shortest possible time. So how do you achieve it?

Do you:

i.) Sell your own product? Not really. A lot of time will be wasted right from the start as you need to work hard to find all the right sources for your promotion and distribution.

ii.) Is it your mailing list? Not quite. It would take a lot of time and effort for you to build a large number of subscribers to your mailing list, not to mention the fact that even more time is required to establish good relationships with them.

iii.) Is it the quality of your product? Nope, because you have to be friends with your customers first before they can enjoy the quality benefits of your product.

So just what is the best kept secret of Internet marketing that can literally propel you to online riches in the shortest possible time?

My dear friend, this secret is called joint ventures, or JV in short. So what are joint ventures? It is simply a partnership between online entrepreneurs with the same vision, objective and passion to take on joint projects that will result in enormous beneficial gains.

Advantages of a joint venture

A joint venture can be very beneficial to an Internet marketing professional. Firstly, since a joint venture involves a few partners, the investment costs will be minimized as it is equally distributed among the partners. On the other, if there any losses suffered, then it will also be shared with all the partners involved in the venture.

Secondly, the partners can bring together all their resources to set up a powerful Internet marketing campaign. The numbers will keep on multiplying: 3 or 4 mailing lists are definitely better than 1; 5 or more products are better than just one offer; joining forces with other people's group of affiliates is always better than marketing with only your own affiliates.

Are joint ventures really that invincible?

Sad to say, joint ventures are just like any other Internet marketing projects: they are not spared from any problems. The main problem is that if your partners feel that you are not capable of making any significant contribution to the venture, they will reject your proposal. The worse case scenario is that they will dismiss you as someone who just want something for nothing.

Basically, your potential JV partners would expect the following from you:

i.) A high quality product that, once released into the market, will sell like hot cakes.
ii.) A group of high-powered and motivated affiliates to help boost the venture's conversion rates.
iii.) And most importantly, a sizeable and highly responsive mailing list that will give their brand and their products considerable exposure.

If you do not have any or all of the above mentioned, then you will have problems attracting potential partners willing to go into a joint venture with you.

So does that mean that if you don't meet the requirements of your prospective partners, you don't stand a chance?

Not really. There are many Internet marketing professionals out there who are willing to look beyond what you currently have. These people understand that you have to start somewhere, because they were after all in your shoes before. They will never forget their early days trying to overcome the difficult challenges of Internet marketing.

But how do you get the Internet marketing experts to say 'yes' to you?

It may sound like a daunting task, but is actually quite simple. All you need to do is just come up with a brilliant idea to get them excited. Your idea obviously has got to be exclusive, and is not found anywhere else. It should be so brilliant that they will slap their foreheads and kick themselves for not coming up with the same idea earlier.

Once you have got the idea, you will move on to the next step, which is to present it to your potential partners. Your presentation has got to be logical enough, and the objective has to be crystal clear, so that they can understand what you are talking about. You have to show them why your idea is so brilliant, and why this idea will be a great success.

How you present your idea is also very important. Just think of it as a formal presentation of a business plan in front of a group of willing investors ready to listen to what you are proposing. Be as professional as you can.

If you can follow all the points highlighted here, you will be able to set yourself up for tremendous success for your joint ventures. And when success finally smile on you, only then will you realize that joint ventures are indeed the best kept secrets of Internet marketing.

Wyatt Lee is an expert author specializing on the subject of Internet marketing. Do NOT Click Here, unless you want to get FREE inside secrets of a homeless chap who made more than $3 million in just 27 months online.

Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

Consumer Mailings, Your Direct way to Keep in Touch with Customers

2006-08-24T19:34:00.000-07:00

One of the best ways to remind your customer about you and what you do for them is to keep them on a consumer mailing list. This is one of the best ways to maintain return customers.

Always ask a customer right before they check out if they want to be added to the consumer mailing list. On internet websites it is best just to have a box that the customer can check if they choose to be on the list. The less information that they have to fill out the better, too much blanks to fill out will cause them to decide not go through with the consumer mailing list.

Don’t inundate the consumer with mailings once they are on that list. It gets annoying for the customer and costly for you, the business owner. Keeping mailings down to monthly occurrences will keep you fresh in their minds and the most likely source that they will turn to when they need to buy more of a product that you have. Also consider the fact that they may hold on to your newsletter or advertisement for future reference. This is a great opportunity for you to offer incentives to the consumer that you are targeting in these consumer mailings.

When sending out mailing lists make sure that it is efficient for you. Use programs that are designed to make sending out consumer mailing lists as efficient as possible. If you choose not to use a program have the names of your consumers organized so that who ever in your company is in charge of the mailing is sending out the correspondence it doesn’t take them a lot of time.

Consumer mailing lists should be practical and efficient for both you and your customer. Keeping them to an appropriate limit and making sure that they are relevant to matters concerning your company will keep your customers focused on what you want them to know. If you keep your newsletter too long then it will be boring for them to keep reading it when they have other matters that they need to tend to.

Taking steps to increase the efficiency of your consumer mailing list will aid your company’s growth potential and bring more business your way by keeping you in the forefront of your costumer’s mind. Consumer mailings are one of the most primary tools that your company can use in its business ventures. Whether the consumer mailings are via regular mail or via email your company will nonetheless benefit greatly from it.

Consumer Mailings

Article Source: http://www.eArticlesOnline.com

E-mail

2006-08-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Electronic mail, abbreviated e-mail or email, is a method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving messages over electronic communication systems. The term e-mail applies both to the Internet e-mail system based on the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and to intranet systems allowing users within one company to e-mail each other. Often these workgroup collaboration organizations may use the Internet protocols for internal e-mail service.

Origins of e-mail

E-mail predates the Internet; existing e-mail systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet. The Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) was begun at MIT in 1961. It allowed multiple users to log into the the 7094 from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC's Q32 and MIT's CTSS.

E-mail was quickly extended to become network e-mail, allowing users to pass messages between different computers. The messages could be transferred between users on different computers by 1966, but it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before.

The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of e-mail. There is one report [1] which indicates experimental inter-system e-mail transfers on it shortly after its creation, in 1969. Ray Tomlinson initiated the use of the @ sign to separate the names of the user and their machine in 1971 [2]. The ARPANET significantly increased the popularity of e-mail, and it became the killer app of the ARPANET.

Growing popularity

As the utility and advantages of e-mail on the ARPANET became more widely known, the popularity of e-mail increased, leading to demand from people who were not allowed access to the ARPANET. A number of protocols were developed to deliver e-mail among groups of time-sharing computers over alternative transmission systems, such as UUCP and IBM's VNET e-mail system.

Since not all computers or networks were directly inter-networked, e-mail addresses had to include the "route" of the message, that is, a path between the computer of the sender and the computer of the receivers. E-mail could be passed this way between a number of networks, including the ARPANET, BITNET, and NSFNET, as well as to hosts connected directly to other sites via UUCP.

The route was specified using so-call "bang path" addresses, specifying hops to get from some assumed-reachable location to the addressee, so called because each hop is into a form understandable by another vendor.

The CCITT developed the X.400 standard in the 1980s to allow different e-mail systems to interoperate. Roughly at the same time, the IETF developed a much simpler protocol called the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) which has become the de facto standard for e-mail transfer on the Internet. With the advent of widespread use of home personal computers connected to the Internet, interoperability via SMTP-based Internet e-mail has become a critical feature for all e-mail systems.

In 1969 US Air Force users were sending text messages by keypunching cards with long text messages using one card for each 80 character line and transmitting them as card decks from one computer to another. By 1979, US Air Force users were logging onto central computers k within hours. By the end of 1983 US Air Force users were using user names like alclark@vax1.mil to send e-mail between a nationwide linkup of VAX computers. By 1984 these same users were using personal computers for same.

In 1979, the US Post Office bought a computer specifically for e-mail, but wound up selling it to private industry.

In 1982 the White House adopted a prototype e-mail system from IBM called the Professional Office System, or PROFs for the National Security Council (NSC) staff. By April 1985, the system was fully operational within the NSC with home terminals for principals on the staff. By November of 1986 the rest of the White House came online, first with the PROFs system, and later (by the end of the 1980s) through a variety of systems including VAX A-1 ("All in One"), and ccmail.

Modern Internet e-mail

How Internet e-mail works

The diagram above shows a typical sequence of events that takes place when Alice composes a message using her mail user agent (MUA). She types in, or selects from an address book, the e-mail address of her correspondent. She hits the "send" button. Her MUA formats the message in Internet e-mail format and uses the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send the message to the local mail transfer agent (MTA), in this case smtp.a.org, run by Alice's Internet Service Provider (ISP).

The MTA looks at the destination address provided in the SMTP protocol (not from the message header), in this case bob@b.org. A modern Internet e-mail address is a string of the form localpart@domain.example, creating a Fully Qualified Domain Address (FQDA). The part before the @ sign is the local part of the address, often the username of the recipient, and the part after the @ sign is a domain name. The MTA looks up this domain name in the Domain Name System to find the mail exchange servers accepting messages for that domain.
The DNS server for the b.org domain, ns.b.org, responds with an MX record listing the mail exchange servers for that domain, in this case mx.b.org, a server run by Bob's ISP.
smtp.a.org sends the message to mx.b.org using SMTP, which delivers it to the mailbox of the user bob.
Bob presses the "get mail" button in his MUA, which picks up the message using the Post Office Protocol (POP3).

This sequence of events applies to the majority of e-mail users. However, there are many alternative possibilities and complications to the e-mail system:

Alice or Bob may use a client connected to a corporate e-mail system, such as IBM's Lotus Notes or Microsoft's Exchange. These systems often have their own internal e-mail format and their clients typically communicate with the e-mail server using a vendor-specific, proprietary, protocol. The server sends or receives e-mail via the Internet through the product's Internet mail gateway which also does any necessary reformatting. If Alice and Bob work for the same company, the entire transaction may happen completely within a single corporate e-mail system.
Alice may not have a MUA on her computer but instead may connect to a webmail service.
Alice's computer may run its own MTA, so avoiding the transfer at step 1.
Bob may pick up his e-mail in many ways, for example using the Internet Message Access Protocol, by logging into mx.b.org and reading it directly, or by using a webmail service.
Domains usually have several mail exchange servers so that they can continue to accept mail when the main mail exchange server is not available.

It used to be the case that many MTAs would accept messages for any recipient on the Internet and do their best to deliver them. Such MTAs are called open mail relays. This was important in the early days of the Internet when network connections were unreliable. If an MTA couldn't reach the destination, it could at least deliver it to a relay that was closer to the destination. The relay would have a better chance of delivering the message at a later time. However, this mechanism proved to be exploitable by people sending unsolicited bulk e-mail and as a consequence very few modern MTAs are open mail relays, and many MTAs will not accept messages from open mail relays because such messages are very likely to be spam.

Note that the people, e-mail addresses and domain names in this explanation are fictional: see Alice and Bob.

Internet e-mail format

The format of Internet e-mail messages is defined in RFC 2822 and a series of RFCs, RFC 2045 through RFC 2049, collectively called Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Although as of July 13, 2005 (see [3]) RFC 2822 is technically a proposed IETF standard and the MIME RFCs are draft IETF standards, these documents are the de facto standards for the format of Internet e-mail. Prior to the introduction of RFC 2822 in 2001 the format described by RFC 822 was the de facto standard for Internet e-mail for nearly two decades; it is still the official IETF standard. The IETF reserved the numbers 2821 and 2822 for the updated versions of RFC 821 (SMTP) and RFC 822, honoring the extreme importance of these two RFCs. RFC 822 was published in 1982 and based on the earlier RFC 733.

Internet e-mail messages consist of two major sections:

Header - Structured into fields such as summary, sender, receiver, and other information about the e-mail
Body - The message itself as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end

The header is separated from the body by a blank line.

Internet e-mail header

The message header consists of fields. Each header field has a name and a value. RFC 2822 specifies the precise syntax. Informally, the field name starts in the first character of a line, followed by a ":", followed by the value which is continued on non-null subsequent lines that have a space or tab as their first character. Field names and values are restricted to 7-bit ASCII characters. Non-ASCII values may be represented using MIME encoded words. Messages usually have at least four fields in the header:

From: The e-mail address, and optionally name, of the sender of the message
To: The e-mail addresses, and optionally names, of the receiver of the message
Subject: A brief summary of the contents of the message
Date: The local time and date when the message was originally sent

Note however that the "To" field in the header is not necessarily related to the addresses to which the message is delivered. The actual delivery list is supplied in the SMTP protocol, not extracted from the header content. The "To" field is similar to the greeting at the top of a conventional letter which is delivered according to the address on the outer envelope. Also note that the "From" field does not have to be the real sender of the e-mail message. It is very easy to fake the "From" field and let a message seem to be from any mail address. It is possible to digitally sign e-mail, which is much harder to fake. Some Internet service providers do not relay e-mail claiming to come from a domain not hosted by them, but very few (if any) check to make sure that the person or even e-mail address named in the "From" field is the one associated with the connection.

Other common header fields include:

Cc: Courtesy copy (See also carbon copy.)
Received: Tracking information generated by mail servers that have previously handled a message
Content-Type: Information about how the message has to be displayed, usually a MIME type

Many e-mail clients present "Bcc" (Blind courtesy copy, recipients not visible in the "To" field) as a header field. Since the entire header is visible to all recipients, "Bcc" is not included in the message header. Addresses added as "Bcc" are only added to the SMTP delivery list, and do not get included in the message data.

Saved message file extension

Different applications save e-mail files with different file extensions.

.eml: This is used by Microsoft Office Outlook, Outlook Express, and is the default e-mail extension for Mozilla Thunderbird.
.emlx: Used by Apple Mail.

Messages and mailboxes

Messages are exchanged between hosts using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol with software like Sendmail. Users download their messages from servers usually with either the POP or IMAP protocols, though in a large corporate environment users are likely to use some proprietary protocol such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange Servers.

Mail can be stored either on the client or on the server side. Standard formats for mailboxes include Maildir and mbox. Several prominent e-mail clients use their own proprietary format and require conversion software to transfer e-mail between them.

When a message cannot be delivered, the recipient MTA must send a bounce message back to the sender, indicating the problem.

Spamming and e-mail worms

The usefulness of e-mail is being threatened by three phenomena: spamming, phishing and e-mail worms.

Spamming is unsolicited commercial e-mail. Because of the very low cost of sending e-mail, spammers can send hundreds of millions of e-mail messages each day over an inexpensive Internet connection. Hundreds of active spammers sending this volume of mail results in information overload for many computer users who receive tens or even hundreds of junk messages each day.

E-mail worms use e-mail as a way of replicating themselves into vulnerable computers. Although the first e-mail worm affected UNIX computers, the problem is most common today on the more popular Microsoft Windows operating system.

The combination of spam and worm programs results in users receiving a constant drizzle of junk e-mail, which reduces the usefulness of e-mail as a practical tool.

A number of technology-based initiatives mitigate the impact of spam. In the United States, U.S. Congress has also passed a law, the Can Spam Act of 2003, attempting to regulate such e-mail.

Privacy problems regarding e-mail

Main article: e-mail privacy

E-mail privacy, without some security precautions, can be compromised because

e-mail messages are generally not encrypted;
e-mail messages have to go through intermediate computers before reaching their destination, meaning it is relatively easy for others to intercept and read messages;
many Internet Service Providers (ISP) store copies of your e-mail messages on their mail servers before they are delivered. The backups of these can remain up to several months on their server, even if you delete them in your mailbox.

There are cryptography applications that can serve as a remedy to the above, such as Virtual Private Networks, message encryption using PGP or the GNU Privacy Guard, encrypted communications with the e-mail servers using:

Transport Layer Security
Secure Sockets Layer
Tor

Another risk is that e-mail passwords might be intercepted during sign-in. One may use encrypted authentication schemes such as SASL to help prevent this.

Mailing list archive

2006-08-14T19:31:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mailing list archive is a collection of past messages from one or more electronic mailing lists. Such archives often include searching and indexing functionality.

Many (perhaps most) archives are directly associated with the mailing list, but some organizations like Gmane collect archives from multiple mailing lists hosted at different organizations - thus, one message sent to one popular mailing list can end up in many different archives.

Some popular free software programs for collecting mailing list archives are Hypermail and MHonArc.

List of archives

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Wikipedia:Mailing lists - Wikipedia's mailing list archives.
Geocrawler
MARC [1]
Gmane [2]
The Mail Archive [3]
Nabble [4]
archive.netbsd.se [5]

Electronic mailing list

2006-08-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An electronic mailing list, a type of Internet forum, is a special usage of e-mail that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list of e-mail addresses, the people ("subscribers") receiving mail at those addresses, the publications (e-mail messages) sent to those addresses, and a reflector, which is a single e-mail address that, when designated as the recipient of a message, will send a copy of that message to all of the subscribers.

How automated electronic mailing lists work

Electronic mailing lists are usually fully or partially automated through the use of special mailing list software and a reflector address that are set up on a server capable of receiving e-mail. Incoming messages sent to the reflector address are processed by the software, and, depending on their content, are acted upon internally (in the case of messages containing commands directed at the software itself) or are distributed to all e-mail addresses subscribed to the mailing list. Depending on the software, additional addresses may be set up for the purpose of sending commands.

Many electronic mailing list servers have a special email address in which subscribers (or those that want to be subscribers) can send commands to the server to perform such tasks as subscribing and unsubscribing, temporarily halting the sending of messages to them, or changing available preferences. The common format for sending these commands is to send an email that contains simply the command followed by the name of the electronic mailing list the command pertains too. Examples: subscribe anylist or subscribe anylist John Doe. Some list servers also allow people to subscribe, unsubscribe, change preferences, etc. via a website.

Electronic mailing list servers can be set to forward messages to subscribers of a particular mailing list either individually as they are received by the list server or in digest form in which all messages received on a particular day by the list server are combined into one email that is sent once per day to subscribers. Some mailing lists allow individual subscribers to decide how they prefer to receive messages from the list server (individual or digest).

Types of mailing lists

One type of electronic mailing list is an announcement list, which is used primarily as a one-way conduit of information and can only be "posted to" by selected people.

Another type of electronic mailing list is a discussion list, in which any subscriber may post. On a discussion list, a subscriber uses the mailing list to send messages to all the other subscribers, who may answer in similar fashion. Thus, actual discussion and information exchanges can happen. Mailing lists of this type are usually topic-oriented (for example, politics, scientific discussion, joke contests), and the topic can range from extremely narrow to "whatever you think could interest us". In this they are similar to Usenet newsgroups, and share the same aversion to off-topic messages. The term discussion group encompasses both these types of lists and newsgroups.

On some discussion lists, every message must be approved by a moderator before being sent to the rest of the subscribers. Moderator approval is usually employed to keep a high average quality of posts and weed out spam.

Some mailing lists are open to anyone who wants to join them, while others require an approval from the list owner before one can join. Joining a mailing list is called "subscribing" and leaving a list is called "unsubscribing".

Mailing list services

Free web-based services offering an easy way to run and maintain such lists were popular in the late 1990s, but many of these were taken over or went bust, so that the only popular provider is now Yahoo! Groups. This is used by a wide range of groups, including organisations who might at first glance be considered 'rivals' to Yahoo! MSN Groups appears to be pushing hard to catch up to Yahoo!. Freelists.org is a web-based service using all-free software, though it may be more difficult for some users to set up. The new version of Google Groups includes free mailing list services as well as access to Usenet. MailSpaces adds wiki and feed aggregation to the traditional group model, and ties it together with an "auto-tagging" function using natural language processing techniques.

Mailing List

2006-08-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

Mailing list
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers are referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the list".

At least two quite different types of mailing lists can be defined: the first one is closer to the literal sense, where a "mailing list" of people is used as a recipient for newsletters, periodicals or advertising. Traditionally this was done through the postal system, but with the rise of e-mail, the electronic mailing list became popular.

When similar or identical material is sent out to all subscribers on a mailing-list, it is often referred to as a mailshot or blast. A list for such use can also be referred to as a distribution list.

In legitimate (non-spam) mailing lists, the individual can subscribe or unsubscribe themselves.

Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list for only contractually agreed-upon times. The mailing list owner typically enforces this by "salting" the mailing list with fake addresses and creates new salts for each time the list is rented[1]. Unscrupulous renters may attempt to bypass salts by renting several lists and merging them to find the common, valid addresses. Mailing list brokers exist to help organizations rent their lists. For some organizations, such as specialized niche publications or charitable groups, their lists may be some of their most valuable assets, and mailing list brokers help them maximize the value of their lists.

Popular mailing list companies include:

Dun and Bradstreet, WorldProspects.com, InfoUSA and Zoom Info.