best practices contacting membership

best by email or some other method?

[gumbo]

I manage a relatively new website for a private organization. We have around 400 email addresses for members. We expect to have 2,000 shortly. We want to periodically contact them directly. We do not run our own mail server. What is the best way to do these occasional direct contacts, through a mass email or some other method? If mass email, is there some way to exclude the addresses of other addressees from the message viewed by each recipient? Thanks.

[lammert]

First of all, welcome to WebmasterWorld!

If mass email, is there some way to exclude the addresses of other addressees from the message viewed by each recipient?

You can list the recipients in the Bcc field:

From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Bcc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; ...

[jezra]

If you do not run your own mail server but have access to a mail server, I would check to see if there is a limit on the number of BCC's you can have in a single email. My email server is limited to 300. From an email recipients point of view, I would not use BCC and would instead send directly to the end user.The reason being that emails with my address in the BCC field and not in the TO field set off my spam filter.

[gumbo]

Thanks for the good advice, but I wasn't clear enough in my request. I am familiar with the BCC field. Do you know of any way to mail to a mailing group set up in your email program (I'm using Outlook Express)and have the addresses either inserted into the BCC field or not included at all (other than the addressee of the moment of course.)