Hi,

I have a list of people i want to contact via email, around 100. It is for a small site i set up, to save the farmer's market i worked at in London. Basically this market was closed by the company which manages most London Farmer's markets, but the traders and the customers want to keep this market running. We have been negotiating with the school which hosts the market every Sunday, and need to get all the paperwork concerning a new contract sorted out before we can go forward. It looks like this will be a community run market, jointly operated by customers and traders for the local community (cutting out the middleman altogether, just paying rent to the school ) - if we can satisfy the school, with a watertight legal contract.

I collected nearly 100 names and email addresses on the last day of the market (it's shut now a couple of weeks, and we only had a few weeks notice) and would like to send them all an email, pointing them to the website, and online petition, plus mailing list/newsletter i have set up on this site, to keep up to date with the news.

The domain host suggested i get a third party email service to send so many emails, as they have strict filters which would not allow so many mails. After a few false starts, i have an account with Sendinblue, have my  domain authenticated, SPF and DKIM records set on my ISPs DNS and had them look over this also. All seems good.

I have set up a few test lists to send around 6 emails at a time to some of my friends and most mail ends up in the spam folders, especially gmail accounts. I have been telling my friends to check all mail from my domain, as 'not spam' and send me a reply - in the hope this might improve my reputation with gmail et al .

Is there anything else i can do?

( i presume, if i had my own citadel server up and running, i could have used the mailing list built in to citadel to send bulk mail ? )

Well the third party (sendinblue) just listed the two txt records, one spf, and one dkim to create on my ISP's (my domian host) DNS.

And here is  the spf record:    v=spf1 include:spf.sendinblue.com mx ~all   (that's obviously the record value, but the 'host' field is blank)

So it looks like that covers all emails coming from sendinblue?

They didnt tell me, for the dkim, you have to split the record up in to managable chunks, which my ISP done for me.

Thanks Ragnar! You are the second person who has recomended Mailchimp. You said "our"? Do you work for Mailchimp?

Maybe third time lucky? I tried Mailgun, now Sendinblue...

Mon Aug 27 2018 14:23:45 EDT from Ragnar Danneskjold

Sorry - just a type. R and T are next to each other. Meant out.

lol! Everything between A and Z - (or Q & M ?) is fartoo close together for my claws of fingers.

I just sent my first mail to my main list of nearly 100. 14 hard bounces - one soft. Gawd and i spent ages typing up those email addresses, and verifying the unintellagaqble ones.

Exciting stuff i have 5 openers, and one guy who has signed up for our newsletter/mailing list. (actually i remember this guys email as i had to check his domain, it was a real scrawl,

but glad i did, as he was a top lawyer from offices in the best lawyers addresses in London. We need legal help at the moment at our little market :) ) .

Anyway, i'm happy to get some news out to the people who left me their emails  just over 4 weeks ago.

I wish i had something stronger than a coke, or coffee right now. :)

I've been able to receive e-mails (on Uncensored Citadel) from external e-mail hosts, but the ones I've sent in reply were never delivered.  Is this a known glitch?

Because of past abuse, we've had to set things up so that new accounts need permission to send Internet mail.  I'll switch it on for you now.

You are a scholar and a gentleman...