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Best way to send a one-time email notification to around 250 users?
What is the best way to send a one-time email notification to 200-250 users? The email consists of a PDF attachment and the body of the email is the same message contained in the PDF. It's not spam, it's a one-time status update to let customers of a small, but important local business (that has no online presence/own domain) know that it will be going out of business on short notice. The message will not be personalized - all recipients will be sent the identical letter/email.
Requirements:
1. Recipient addresses are kept private & no recipient can see any other's email address
2. Responses from recipients are automatically bounced/recipients cannot reply
3. Recipient email addresses should not be saved since this is only a one-time email to be sent
4. I have proof that the email notification was _sent _to the list of recipients
5. High chance of landing in the inbox
Strongly preferred:
1. Sender address is something that is recognizable/seems legitimate (e.g. Amazon, some other mailing service, or a custom domain can be purchased)
2. Relatively simple/easy as there is not much time
3. Easy to import the list of recipient email addresses (they are currently saved in a spreadsheet)
4. Relatively inexpensive
I know that some people are able to make new Gmail accounts easily. Unfortunately, when I tried in the last few years, I was always asked to verify with a phone #, even when using different devices or when travelling. I would also rather not have yet another email address/inbox to manage as I'm already unable to keep up with my existing flood of emails. 
TIA for the help!
Comments
Mxroute @jar
I've had a couple mail plans with @jar for several years and he's my main email provider. I definitely sing his praises lol.
@jar if this is something you might be able to offer, please let me know.
Why would you think this should be any issue with MXRoute?
What's the big deal about giving a verification phone number for a new Gmail account?
I don't think it's an issue or something beyond his ability, I just didn't think it's a service he focuses on as part of his core offerings (mail hosting).
IMO, a business using an @gmail address looks unprofessional. I get that it's easy, but it just rubs me the wrong way. I also prefer to not use my phone number for stuff like this unless I absolutely need to.
Send it all at once, delete the email account you sent it from so they can't reply, and ask me for proof of delivery for the emails sent. I think that covers it all 💜
Something to also maybe consider for help with proof of opening the email. Create your message withi an inline photo that is connected to your webserver, this will allow you a rough count of how many people opened it, or at least opened it and allowed the image to be downloaded. Also don't attach the pdf, I never open any attached documents, have a link to your pdf to download if they want it.
Just my 2cents.
just use AWS SES job done!
very easy to setup and users cant reply unless you specific a return address
Images are pre-blocked in all sane email clients. It is not possible to determine if email opened. And word “download” or “click here” - increase spam score by a lot.
Are you calling me a duck or a quack?
Thanks, @jar! I've poking around the Roundcube interface on my account and think I've got the steps down, but would feel much better if you could double check if I'm missing any key steps. In this situation, it's very important that no recipient can see any other recipient's address (or my address, other than the noreply@newdomain from which it would be sent).
So, basically:
1. Register a new domain
2. Add the domain to one of my existing MXRoute plans (should I set up DKIM if I can figure it out or is it not worth it?)
3. Create a noreply@newdomain email address
4. Create a "Discard with message" (with a one-liner autoreply about not being able to receive messages) filter for that email address with scope "All messages"
5. Convert the list of emails in the spreadsheet to a comma-separated list ([email protected], [email protected], and so on)
6. Go into the Roundcube webmail interface for noreply@newdomain, compose the email, & add the attachment
7. Paste the comma-separated list of 200+ emails into the BCC field
8. Send
9. Ticket in requesting proof of delivery
As long as you're using BCC:, you shouldn't have to worry about anyone seeing anyone else's email address, regardless of which email service you use.
How could customers know it's a legitimate email from the local business, instead of a scammer / competitor sending the email?
If the customers were previously contacted by email, use the same email address to send the notice.
If not, send the notice with US mail.
This was a concern, but as I mentioned, the business is offline-only with no domain of their own. The business doesn't routinely email people.
It's not in the US and mail is much slower here, which is a challenge with the timeline. I'm stuck with this notification task (among several other offline tasks that are also stressing me out) and have no admin support for doing this (yay). Even ignoring cost, printing, addressing, and mailing that many envelopes would be a painful timesuck and I don't have enough time with the very short timeline or experience with printing on labels and whatnot.
It should come from an aged domain but otherwise sounds great. Ticket me about giving you an email on an established domain to do it. I trust you.
What's the practical difference, in regards to this email use case, what date the WHOIS indicates the domain was created?
The difference between almost immediate blacklisting at spamhaus and SEM. Reputation is earned, new domains blasting out mail throws up red flags almost everywhere.
Thank you, @jar ! I love you, too.
In other words, when buying a previously owned domain, your outgoing emails from that domain will be affected by its previous owners reputation.
That too, but domains are treated as disposable by spammers who register countless new ones to send spam from. So now a domain is considered suspicious for merely being new.
I can confirm this from recent personal experience when I obtained a brand-new domain to use for personal web and mail, and Spamhaus blacklisted it -- the domain, not the IP address -- within a couple of days (and I had sent very little mail!)
I had a polite exchange with Spamhaus and they aren't willing to delist my domain for the time being. They said that they may delist it with time if I follow good practices (SPF, DKIM, etc.), which I do, of course
Anyway, ...
For new domain,send emails 3 months after registration.
Correctly set up SPF,DKIM,DMARC for the domain,and for the IP,set up PTR correctly.
Do not send too many emails when you start to use,you need to warm up you ip and domain raputation.