No longer able to email Gmail distribution lists!

[ItsBeyondMe23]

The ODD Campaign (Otley Development Disaster) was launched over 10 years ago. It provides a free service informing interested residents about potentially unwelcome development proposals. An overall Email distribution list of under 350 members is used to send a (typically) monthly update to all. More frequent emails are sent to particular sub-groups depending upon the state of current planning applications etc.

For many years ODD has successfully used Gmail as a dedicated email account, using the Gmail Contacts “Labels” to create sub-groups as required. All such emails are sent TO: a spare email account and BCC: to the distribution list. Typically, the text of an email will include hyperlinks and there may be an attachment.

However, recently there have been problems with all the ???@btinternet.com email addresses periodically being rejected as SPAM by the BT email server.

Such difficulties have now escalated, with the Mail Delivery Subsystem returning a “Message Blocked” response for each of the BT addresses in that distribution list:
The response from the remote server was:
554 Message rejected for policy reasons (2.1.2.3) on 2023/03/13 16:13:09 GMT

More worryingly, a subsequent test email to an Outlook email address also resulted in a “Message Blocked”
The response was:
Message rejected. See https://support.google.com/mail/answer/69585 for more information.

Unable to adequately understand the above, and concerned about further contagion, no further emails have been sent from the dedicated Gmail account. Incoming emails are still arriving.

Request for Advice

The above is beyond my knowledge, but I assume some form of blacklisting has occurred.

I need an operational solution, and fairly quickly:
Can the outgoing emails from the current Gmail account be made to work reliably?

Alternatively:
Would it be better to switch to (an inexpensive) alternative - and if so, what?

I have looked at some alternatives. Mailchimp does appear to support lists and sub-lists, but the free version is limited to 1000 emails a month. Assuming that this refers to the number of generated emails, this limit could be too tight at busy times. The cheapest Mailchimp paid plan (Essentials) costs £10.80 plus VAT, this is more than I am prepared to fund.

I have not yet managed to identify an alternative option, any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Alastair Watson
18 March 2023

[janusz]

Have a look at https://www.forbes.com/advisor/busin...-alternatives/

[JeremyNicoll]

Originally Posted by ItsBeyondMe23

However, recently there have been problems with all the ???@btinternet.com email addresses periodically being rejected as SPAM by the BT email server.

That's an odd way of phrasing what (I think) you mean.

I think you're saying that the BT server that processes incoming email is rejecting - as likely spam - emails you're sending to various accounts that it handles mail for.

If that's the case it's not the email addresses at the server that are thought to be spam.


I expect that what's happened is that one or more of those recipients of your emails have become irritated by the arrival of your messages and have deliberately (or accidentally - it makes no difference) reported one of the mails as spam.

Now the server rejects all similar messages, no matter who they are addressed to.


This is a common problem when people forget that they can unsubscribe to mail lists ... and it's a problem in particular when lists have older people on them especially if they begin to be affected by memory problems or - worse - dementia. This issue stopped me from contemplating a mail list for sending emails to members of a community choir many of whom are in their 80s and 90s. Just one person objecting to one mail could have broken it for everybody.


/If/ this is what's happened to you, it's clearly likely to have been someone with one of those BT addresses that did it. It might not even be the person that you associate with the address - some people use one address per couple/family and then anyone using the family computer could have done it ... and even the other family member(s) won't know that they did it.


There's no easy solution if this IS what happened. And even if it wasn't like this, it's quite likely to happen in future no matter what solution you find now.

[TenFour]

This is a common problem when people forget that they can unsubscribe to mail lists ... and it's a problem in particular when lists have older people on them especially if they begin to be affected by memory problems or - worse - dementia.

No need to stereotype seniors. In my experience running email lists for many years a lot of people, of all ages, have no idea about what it means to report an email as spam instead of unsubscribing. Often the problem is with the creator of the email not including a prominent and working unsubscribe link. I have reported many of these to the email creators and they are often surprised that the once working link no longer does so. The average person will just get frustrated and report the emails as spam or block them. Some people report particular emails as spam not realizing that the action will likely block all further emails from that source.

In any case the bottom line is that free Gmail is not the correct tool for mailing lists. I have had good results with ConstantContact and MailerLite.

[ItsBeyondMe23]

The suggestion that the (primary) cause may be members of the distribution lists flagging ODD email(s) as SPAM is interesting (not one that I had thought of). The lists have ben running for about 10 years and we are all getting older!

However, development within Otley remains a live issue for residents and all emails have a footnote regarding removal from that list. The BT email addresses are only about 8% of the total yet they do seem to the root of the problem. Possibly BT respond more strongly to a SPAM report?

Other than one at a time, I am unable to email the members of the distribution lists and suspect that I will have to find an alternative platform. Most appear to be complex and expensive “marketing platforms”, not what I need.

I will assess (the free version of) MailerLite.

Any other suggestions (I have a master email list of ~350 members plus a (dynamic) number of smaller sub-lists)?

[TenFour]

An obvious option is to use another tool, such as social media, to spread this information. Lots of people use Facebook for this purpose, and apparently it works well for them. I'm not a fan of FB, but where I live there are numerous organizations that rely primarily on FB for their communications. I rather like Twitter too, and I follow numerous nonprofits I support and am interested in. They Tweet out any new developments with links to the website for more information.

[ItsBeyondMe23]

The ODD Campaign also uses FB (currently this is the only means of reaching out) but not everyone does (and everything said is in the public domain).

Need to find a (cost) effective means of delivering emails to the distribution lists.

[TenFour]

If you subscribe to a Google Workspace business plan you can use something called "multi-send" that allows you to send to up to 1,500 recipients. https://support.google.com/mail/answ...nd-limitations

[somdcomputerguy]

Originally Posted by ItsBeyondMe23

Other than one at a time, I am unable to email the members of the distribution lists and suspect that I will have to find an alternative platform. Most appear to be complex and expensive “marketing platforms”, not what I need.

Any other suggestions (I have a master email list of ~350 members plus a (dynamic) number of smaller sub-lists)?

Dada Mail is a web-based electronic mailing list management system that can be used for announcement lists.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=dadamail&ia=web