This is a further supplement to the Owner's Manual and the Advanced Owner's Manual for mail-list.com.

Table of Contents:

  Reports

  Clickable Links

  Frequently Asked Questions   

  Bonus Tips   

You can get reports back on various aspects of your list at any time. The showcount command will return the number of current subscribers, in addition to the number of additions and deletions from your list. The showsub, showunsub, and showbounce commands will return the corresponding details of new subscribers, recent unsubscribes, and addresses removed for bounces.  The showdomain command will return a report showing the distribution of your list across domain names and countries.  And the showlist command will return your entire list to you.

In addition, mail-list.com can automatically send you these same reports. These reports will be sent either daily or weekly, your choice.  It is sent at the same time of day, each time. The exact time of day sent is random for each list, to spread out the system load.

This system generated report will also clean out the logs of subscribers, unsubscribers, and bounces.  These are the audit trail logs of your system activity.  The showcount command uses these files to count the number of new subscribers, unsubscribers, and bounces.

Please visit http://db.mail-list.com to make any adjustments on the automatic report delivery.

When you put URL's into the messages you send out to your list, for example:

   http://www.mail-list.com
   mailto:your_email@address.com

Most email readers will display those addresses in color, and become operational when the person clicks or double clicks on the URL.

AOL has the same sort of feature, but needs a different syntax to make it work.  For the clickable feature to work with AOL, you need to have a true HTML web page syntax, for example: <A HREF="http://www.mail-list.com>http://www.mail-list.com</A>;

mail-list.com has a feature that will automatically convert the plain URL to the HTML web page format that AOL needs.  We also enable this feature for your subscribers at cs.com.

mail-list.com will automatically convert all URL's that start with

 http://             Web Page Address
 https://            Secure Web Page Address
 ftp://              FTP server for files
 mailto:             Email address

to the correct full HTML web page syntax for all of your AOL subscribers.  That means that the links will work when they click on them.

To activate this automatic feature, you will need to leave a blank space, tab or carriage return on both sides of the link.  For example:

   Please see our page at (http://www.mail-list.com) **WRONG
   Please see our page at http://www.mail-list.com **CORRECT

Therefore, you can put a plain URL in the body of your message, and it will be clickable for both AOL subscribers, and almost every other subscribers.

Q:  What happens when a subscriber cancels their email account without getting off my list?

A:  Their email will "bounce" when it cannot be delivered, meaning, it comes back to the machine that sent it. The bounced email will be scanned by our computers for the offending email address. If an address bounces too many times, it is automatically removed from the list. You can specify the number of bounces allowed for your list at our web page.

Q:  A copy of my message bounced back into my inbox. What's going on ?

A:  Your subscriber has an ISP with a broken mail system. That is because their ISP's machine should return all bounces to the machine that sent the email, not the address in the From: line. The mail-list.com computers did not see this bounced message, and you may continue to receive this bounce until you use bootoff to delete that address.

Q:  How long does it take to deliver a message ?

A:  That depends upon the number of subscribers on your list and current traffic conditions at mail-list.com. Most messages are delivered within a few hours of being received.

Q:  I sent my message to the list, but I don't think it worked. Should I send it again ?

A:  Do not send out a duplicate copy until you know what happened to your first message. And don't think that if you did (or did not) receive a copy, then that is what happened with everybody.

   There are many things that could have happened. For instance, the message might have gotten stuck in your computer. Or it might have made it to your Internet Provider's computers, but mail-list.com is down. Or the message could have gotten to mail-list.com, and was rejected because you sent it from the wrong address. Or the message might have gone out to most everybody else, and your Internet provider's mail machine is currently down.

   The best verification is to use the email archive command, and verify that your message is in the mail-list.com archives. If it is there, then it was sent to everybody on your list.

   If not, please send a message to us requesting assistance.

Q:  A subscriber just said that they were receiving 80 or more copies

   of my message. How do I make mail-list.com stop sending so many ?

A:  First of all, mail-list.com did not send 80 copies of your message to the subscriber. At least it never has in the past. And you will hear from LOTS of subscribers if and when we do have problems.

   However, various ISP's have email troubles on a regular basis. They run out of disk space, or have other operational problems that cause the email to be placed in your subscribers mailbox many times.

   This problem typically revolves around their ISP's disk being close to full, or their personal mailbox being close to it's size quota. So when your message is delivered to their inbox, an error is triggered, even though the message was successfully delivered. Especially on larger messages. That means the subscriber may receive small messages, but your larger message goes over the quota.

   We have also seen duplicates caused by the mail filtering rules in your subscribers email reader. Should they have several rules that all apply to your message, some email readers will create a duplicate copy for each additional rule.

   Please do a querysent command (described in the Advanced Owner's Manual) on that subscriber. It will show the audit trail of our machine delivering the message. Assuming that it only shows one message sent to your subscriber, then forward that log entry to your subscriber, and ask them to consult with their ISP.

Q:  Somebody just sent me a nasty and vile email.

A:  First of all, there is no need to reply to each and every email you get. Should you want to reply, it need not be sent right away. So never send a message when you are angry.

   You do want to get this person off your list, and also make sure that they do not get back on. The BOOTOFF and ADDREJECT commands will accomplish this. We suggest creating "boilerplate" replies (a form letter), so that you can easily reply with a cool, calm, collected, and neutral message when you need it.

   Let us know if you have any bizarre problems.

   Thanks for reading the entire manual. Mailing lists are slightly more complex than they first appear. Here are some tips that you will want to use to make your mailing list run smoothly.

  Always Cut and Paste, never retype information on your computer.

    Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers all have the
    ability to cut or copy some text to system clipboard, and then
    paste that same exact text into some other window on the
    screen.  You can cut and paste between applications, as the
    clipboard is part of the operating system.

    Especially use cut and paste for important information, like
    passwords, people's names, etc.  Even if it takes you longer to
    find the text and copy it, you will be assured of having the
    correct information, and you will not have to re-do something
    because you mis-typed.

 b) Save a working version or "template" of each type of email you
    send to mail-list.com on a regular basis. The commands and
    Posting a Message are the two most common emails you will use.
    You can keep the repetitive information already filled in.

    When you need to make a change,  take your saved email and
    resend it, after making appropriate changes depending on what
    you need done.

    Since posting a message to your list involves a complicated
    address in the BCC field, this is a good candidate to save for
    future use.

 c) Format your message for the lowest common denominator,
    meaning, the least sophisticated subscribers' computers.  Most
    people do not own the latest and greatest software.

    Send your announcement to either auto-responder

             format@mail-list.com
             autoformat@mail-list.com


    The computer will remove non-ascii text, replacing them with
    blanks.  It will convert quoted-printable (=20 type stuff),
    with ascii characters, and it will format each line to
    approximately 70 characters.

    When your message comes back, proof-read and copy and paste
    into a template that you have saved for sending out messages.

    These extra steps will insure that your message looks the same
    everywhere, and is formatted to handle the worst conditions.