Best way to replace mass emails sent from Entourage with a proper mailing list solution?

I am helping a Los Angeles choreographer to transition away from sending her announcements via Entourage.

Here's the situation: She has multiple conact groups, and sends classes and performance announcements several times a month, to different groups.

She manages the contact groups manually. The group size is between 1500 and 2500 people.

Recently verizon blocked her outgoing port 25, presumably for spam activity. Again, her contacts are interested in the content.

She is aware of mailchimp, constantcontact etc. but would like to be able to send the email via her email software and not have to create a newsletter for every single mailing. Also, she's very short on $$.

So, what would be the best way to set up a system allowing her to send announcements from Entourage, with attached images, to her lists, without having Entourage send every single email?

I am thinking of setting up a set of mailing lists, each corresponding to one of her groups. I have never set up a mailing list before and am wondering if it's possible to have a list accept emails from only one person (Admin) and distribute them to the group?

Recipients should be able to unsubscribe easily, and by default reply to her but not the list. She should be the only one able to use the list for distribution, and should be able to send messages (with attachments) directly from her email client without modification.

Is this possible? Where can I find step-by-step instructions? What are best practices to avoid her domain being blacklisted? What's the easiest way to convert her contact groups to mailing list subscribers?

I am helping her for free, so the simpler the better :)

Thank you!

UPDATE: She has a standard linux hosting account allowing her to run php etc. And, ideally, the emails would come from her personally or at least from her domain name.

She has a standard linux host that runs php. Will phplist allow for her to send the messages via Entourage? My impression is that phplist requires setting up templates and sending the messages via the web interface, something that she's trying to avoid.

aaandre 2010-02-01 19:09:19

My experience is that you need to use the web interface to send messages. You might be able to configure some kind of forwarding

Kevin 2010-02-01 19:14:38

She wants the emails to come from her domain name. Is that possible with GG?

aaandre 2010-02-01 19:10:07

Scott Anderson 2010-02-01 19:13:31

Scott, will google groups prevent subscribers from replying to the list? So, all subscribers can receive but only she can send? And they can reply but only to her?

aaandre 2010-02-01 21:22:42

Yes, you can set up exactly the permissions you want. There's a read-only mailing list that only allows the list administrator to publish to it. You can even make the lists private so people can opt-out, but they can't opt-in without your say.

Scott Anderson 2010-02-02 00:24:37

The premium edition even has a free trial for 30-days, so you can evaluate it and see if it fits for you. Plus your client gets the benefits of gmail, google calendars, google sites, google docs, and google video. All you have to do is set up some DNS records and it's all done.

Scott Anderson 2010-02-02 00:26:15

ansaurus

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Best way to replace mass emails sent from Entourage with a proper mailing list solution?

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