<p>We are having a class reunion in September. We have been gathering names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. We are now ready to start selling tickets and would like to email the 150 people who have provided us with an email address. From what I know, these are my choices:</p>
<ol>
<li> Send an email to everybody but then they all have each others addresses and may not like it. Also, people respond “to all” and you soon are inundated with emails.</li>
<li> Send to each person individually, but that is labor intensive and we will probably have to do this again and the number will be even bigger.</li>
<li> Send one email and bcc everybody. Probably the best choice except someone told us that if you use bcc that’s what gets caught in spam filters. Seems a shame to send an email that half of them won’t get.</li>
</ol>
<p>You can use an email program like MailChimp or Constant contact. Then you can see exactly who opens the email, if any get bounced etc. I believe Mail Chimp can be free and CC is relatively inexpensive if you have less than 1000 names. </p>
<p>Occasionally some companies firewalls will block mail from CC but hopefully people are giving you home email addresses. </p>
<p>Another issue may be with the BCC option. Some email servers will not let you BCC over one hundred names so that may be a problem. </p>
<p>Whatever you do, do NOT send the email with everyone’s address visible! </p>
<p>There is an eventbrite site that can send out emails. It’s FREE if your event is “free” and not charging through the site. It doesn’t disclose emails of folks but can send out a mass email. It’s worth a look, if you’re interested, eventbrite.com. I participated in it to attend a free event and am contemplating using it for an event I’m planning in November. They do send me a few ads about their services, which I ignore. I do tend to bcc folks, sending it to & from me when I send out info & meeting things.</p>
<p>Well, gmail certainly lets me send to more than 100 BCC. And I also get to see if they bounce back. But that would be rare since most of these addresses I know are good. Not sure why I need to use a different email program, especially if I have to pay for it. </p>
<p>I guess I’m just asking if it’s true that emails sent blind go to spam automatically. Because the other two options are not doable. </p>
<p>Agree with the above. I’ve used that method for organizations I volunteer with, using my alternate email address as the named addressee, and I’ve never had a problem with it. In the rare event an email bounced, I got a notification (though sometimes that took a while). If you set up all the class reunion folks as a group in your contacts list, you can just type the name of the group in the bcc box each time–easy peasy.</p>
<p>I agree with MommaJ that emailing blind to a group you are in contact with works. Because they have you in their contacts. But this group does not. It’s just email addresses we’ve collected. So I’m afraid it will go to spam. I’m just wondering if it’s more likely to go to spam if their email is sent BCC than directly to them. If so, I may as well save my time. If it makes no difference, then I will go ahead.</p>
<p>I love Ucbalummus’ suggestion. I’m going to go find me one of those.</p>
<p>For family we use evite or Facebook. A friend of ours whose actual friends number in the thousands also uses evite for his huge shindigs with success. At the church where I work, the pastor has me send all-member messages through email. I send one to myself, and blind cc to everyone else. That keeps it out of everyone’s spam and if someone wants to reply it comes to me only.</p>
<p>I think the question is, if you send an email with 100 BCCs, will some email servers block it as spam?</p>
<p>A quick google search indicates that a lot of people have that impression, so it’s worth investigating. Or just use a free site like evite or mail chimp. </p>
<p>In my case, the emails reach their intended target and I have about 100 people on my list. As for evite-maybe their website has an FAQ or help section that answers that question? Our friend with the thousands of friends is not on my contact list but I get his evites, if that means anything. What about Facebook? Does the class or school have a page? You can do events on FB too. </p>
<p>I think you’re just going to have to try one or more of these options. There is a chance messages from Evite or Punchbowl will get filtered out, esp if their address goes to a corporate email address. But I don’t know what else you can do. BCC and an email program are the best 2 choices.</p>