Newsletter: BCC or Loop To?

[casbboy]

I use Rackspace Email hosting and plan on using my “contact” account to handle newsletters with a custom PHP script.

My primary question is what’s the best way to send out the emails. Either run a loop, sending each email as a “To:” heading, or compiling everybody into a single BCC:?

Also, if instead you think better to use a service (with a PHP API), let me know.

Thanks
Ryan

[felgall]

@casbboy

My primary question is what’s the best way to send out the emails. Either run a loop, sending each email as a “To:” heading, or compiling everybody into a single BCC:?

If you want everyone to see their own address as the To: address then run the loop. If you want everyone to see a specific To: address that isn’t theirs then use Bcc: (which still runs the loop but without changing the To: address).

[casbboy]

Ok,

No difference in terms of likelihood of being considered spam by mail services?

Cheers
Ryan

[felgall]

@casbboy

No difference in terms of likelihood of being considered spam by mail services?

Well the delivery address for the emails are the same in both cases - in one (separate emails) it matches the To: address and in the other (using BCC) it doesn’t match any of the addresses in the email itself. There is no other difference between the two (the emails get sent individually either way) so it would depend on whether matching the To: address or not makes a difference.

[Mittineague]

Not an “email client thinks it’s SPAM” thing, but my host (DreamHost) has a “Bcc bulk” limit of 50

TBH I think if you are sending a lot of emails it would be better to go with a dedicated email service rather than your site host.

[felgall]

@Mittineague

a “Bcc bulk” limit of 50

well that is 50 separate emails all being sent at exactly the same time.that might make it look more like spam than if the same 50 emails were spread out over a few minutes.