Mailing list manager

[muppetbum]

I've found myself on the committee of a local club. It has problems !
The main one being communication. At the moment a large percentage of our members are not receiving emails. This is partly due to ( I suspect) the current method used to send them.
This involves someone typing every members email address into the "to :" field every time.

I'm not going to sort the problem out for them ( they are paid , I'm a volunteer !) but I want to suggest helpful options for them , rather than just bitchin about it.

What I need is a set up whereby members deatils are entered once, in the correct section and then a mailing list manager that allows you to just type something like "mail members " or " mail committee x" etc

the manager would need to be
a) simple to use
b) extremely cheap or free ( I'm tired of cost being used as an excuse)

would really welcome suggestions

Thanks

[BladePilot]

microsoft outlook allows you to build groups very easily, not sure but I think the basic microsoft mail you find on the basic and home software allows you to do it also.

[Saab Dastard]

As Bladepilot says - any mail program will have a way of creating a distribution list / group / mailing list with the addresses you have in the address book / contact list.

Worth checking the incoming mail for "message undeliverable" messages to ascertain problems with the email addresses being used. Could be typos, could be neglected or dead email accounts.

Also, if your mailing list is sufficiently large, it might just be possible that your ISP (or next mail relay) is seeing it as spam and dropping some of the mailing.

SD

[muppetbum]

thanks for your replies

the problem is that spam/blacklisting is being used as an excuse

whats actually happening is that the office staff are not sending it to half the people as they get bored and stop after about 50 addresses

they also send it as a CC to everyone so you get an email with a header three times the size of the email

I know that the email addresses are valid as we had a memebr of staff ring round for everyones current address. Up til this point i used to get communications , once they did this , it stopped , I guess I'm more than 50 addresses down the list !

Thanks

any more ideas keep em coming :)