Sending Your Own Large Mailings

Is a large mailing really what you want to do?

A large mailing is not always the best choice for dissemination of your message. If, after you review the Summary of Effective Communication Methods for Large Audiences, and have determined that a mass mailing meets your needs, please review Mass Mailing Best Practices.

Policy related to sending your own large mailing

The Mass Mail Policy covers mailings that go to more than 1000 individuals, other than self-subscribed mailing lists.

  • Sending to 1000 or fewer recipients — your mailing does not have to adhere to the Mass Mail Policy, but the guidelines here will be of assistance to you in distributing your message. You may choose to use the ITS Mail Service or your collegiate mailing service, or you may distribute the messages yourself.
  • Sending to more than 1000 recipients — you must have a signed approval form for your mailing. With that approval, you may choose to use the ITS Mail Service or you may distribute the messages yourself.
    • If you choose to distribute the message yourself, the signed approval form should be placed on file with the approving VP unit. We ask that you also forward a copy of the signed approval form to ITS E-mail Team, 2800 UCC, Iowa City, IA or FAX to (319) 335-5505 Attn: ITS E-Mail Team.
    • Select a category code for your subject line.
    • The following notice should appear at the end of your message:

    Distribution of this message was approved by the <name of approving units>. The policy governing large mailings, including information on how to filter messages, is available at: http://cs.its.uiowa.edu/email/massmail

  • Mail sent by faculty to students currently enrolled in their courses is exempt, regardless of the size of the course. The guidelines presented here will help with the actual mailing.

Obtaining the addresses for your mailing

The table below indicates ways to obtain the addresses for your mailing.

Population Method Notes
Faculty, staff, students LDAP query to White Pages Look up by individual name
Faculty, staff Web Query system Contact your departmental HR unit representative for assistance
Students Student Warehouse Contact the Registrar's Office for assistance
Any Unrestricted Address LDAP query to White Pages Look up by individual name
Class List Student Warehouse Request Class List from Registrar
Mailing Lists Self-subscribed ITS Mailing List Service

Entering the addresses in your mail client

E-mail clients vary, but in general:

  1. Put the addresses in the Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc:) field in order to:
    • Hide the addresses from other recipients
    • Prevent the display of all addresses in the Header of the message.
    • If you do not do this, recipients must scroll past all of the addresses to find the message. Printing the message means printing all of the addresses.
  2. Punctuation, such as a comma, is not needed if you have a list of addresses, one per line.
  3. There are technical limitations on many campus mail gateways limiting the number of recipients. The central mail servers that handle @uiowa.edu addresses allow up to 1000 addresses in a single submission. The first 1000 addresses will receive the intended message. You will receive the following error message if you try to send your message to more than 1000 recipients at a time:

>>> RCPT To:<jdoe@uiowa.edu>
<<< 452 4.5.3 Too many recipients
jdoe@uiowa.edu... Deferred: 452 4.5.3 Too many recipients

An error message will be returned for each recipient after the first 1000 addresses. You should only resend the   message to the addresses which were returned as "Too many recipients".

Best Practice for Rate of Mail Distribution

The ITS Mass Mail Service practice is to release 250 messages at a time to avoid overloading the outgoing and receiving the mail queues. Be sure to check with your administrator for guidance.