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First Time Visitors - Frequently Asked Questions
How do I operate the mailing list ?
You control your mailing list from your own email reader. No special
software is needed on your computer. Any email reader (such as Eudora,
Outlook, AOL, Pine or Netscape) that can send email messages to the Internet will work fine.
mail-list.com will set up secret email addresses and passwords that
allow you to add or remove people from your list. In addition, you may
retrieve your entire list at any time and schedule/request detailed
reports of all aspects of your list activity.
You also send your email message to the list using your email reader.
When people get your message, they see their email address in the To: line, and your email address in the From: line.
Subscription requests sent by people via email or your web page will
be processed automatically, any time of day or night.
You set up your list from your web browser. You will enter in a list
name, short description of the list purpose, a welcome message, and whether to use your domain name or ours. There are other options
available, and the default values already selected work just fine for most lists.
You may change these values at any time.
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How do I transfer my existing subscribers to your mailing list machine ?
If you are currently sending people email messages, and they have
volunteered to receive your message (no spam from mail-list.com), then you may transfer these subscribers to mail-list.com by emailing the
list to us after you have set your list up. We will add your email addresses to your list, removing duplicates and any invalid email addresses.
You will need to get your current list of subscribers in a plain text file. One email address per line. No commas or tabs in the file.
Then you will cut and paste the entire list into an email message.
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How do new subscribers get onto my announcement list ?
A blank email message to yourlist-on@mail-list.com is the easiest way
for people to get on your list.
In addition, you may offer a web page on your site
where visitors can type in their email address to subscribe. Your web page needs to have a CGI program behind the scenes that takes their
email addresses, and mails it to mail-list.com.
If your web page provider does not offer this CGI capability, then
mail-list.com can provide this function for
your web page.
Because of pranksters and virus signing up other people for mailing
lists, mail-list.com uses a confirmation process when adding people to your list. That is, we send back a message with a random number to the requesting subscriber. When they reply with the same random number,
they are added to your list, and receive your welcome message.
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How do new subscribers get onto my discussion group ?
While most announcement lists allow anybody to join, most discussion
group list owners typically approve each new subscriber. If you choose this process, their initial request to join your list, will be forwarded to you for approval.
Or you may choose the option to allow anybody to join, which will also
follow the confirmation process outlined above.
No matter which subscription process you use, the discussion group list owner can also choose to approve each message before it goes to
the list.
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How long does it take to deliver a message ?
It depends, as there are several factors involved. The number of
subscribers on your list, and the length of your message are important. And there are some times of the week that are busier than
others here at mail-list.com.
As a general rule, a message to an announcement list of several
thousand people is delivered within an hour. A message to a typical discussion group list of several hundred subscribers is
usually delivered within 15 minutes.
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Who owns my list ?
You do. Your list must be people that have volunteered to receive your
message. mail-list.com is not to be used for sending unsolicited message (spam). Typically, you would have collected the email addresses from your web page, or perhaps asked your existing customers for their email address.
mail-list.com does not rent, sell, use or abuse your list of subscribers in any way shape or form. Our job is to protect your list,
and allow you to get your message out to your subscribers any time you want.
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Are advertisements put into my messages ?
mail-list.com does not insert any advertisements, nor anything else
into your messages. We deliver what you send.
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Does mail-list.com claim any copyrights on material posted to my list ?
mail-list.com is a delivery agent, for hire, and makes no claims of
copyright on messages passing through our system.
Some of the free mailing list services do consider themselves to hold
copyrights on messages passing through their machines.
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What happens when a subscriber cancels their email account, and messages can no longer be delivered ?
Bounces are what happens when an email message cannot be delivered. The email is sent back to mail-list.com where we keep track of the error. If an email address bounces multiple times, it is automatically removed from the list.
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Do you all operate "adult" lists ?
We do not currently operate any list for "adult" type materials, nor do we want to.
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Can I send attachments to my list ?
You can send attachments to a discussion group mailing list. All attachments are scanned for viruses before being sent to your list members.
You cannot send attachments to your announcement list. Our experience has been that only a small percentage of subscribers can open and read an attachment. This is due to the many different computers, operating systems, applications, email readers, and levels of technical expertise of your subscribers. In addition, the large size of attachments causes problems delivering your email.
While these problems also come up on discussion groups, the small size of the list and the fact that the subscribers can communicate amongst themselves and help each other out alleviates the problems.
Mailing list etiquette suggests that you post your fancy output on a web page. Either as the web page itself, or a web page that allows people to download your fancy document. Then send a plain text message to your subscribers with a description of your fancy document, and the web page address where they can view or download it.
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