[thelist] Sending Bulk Email

[Bob Meetin]

Fred Jones wrote:
> I have a client who has a list of several thousand emails. He wants to
> send them a one time email, offering his services. AFAIK it's not
> spam, because he will only send it once.
>
> But there's around a thousand or two for each domain, so if we just
> send them all at once (via a simple custom PHP script) perhaps the
> recipient server will take offense and stop them.
>
> So we thought to send 20 every hour from 9 am to 6 pm via cron. Then
> they will not look suspicious.
>
> Sounds reasonable?
>
> Even though this whole idea sounds like spam, I personally am willing
> to do this job because I don't think it really will be considered
> spam--the addresses are somewhat targeted and the letter is very
> friendly, basically offering his services if they're interested, and
> if not, they can ignore it.
>
> Thanks.
>   
This brings up a question - regardless of whether or not it is done 
repetitively, does sending out bulk messages like this, even a one-time 
invitation/offer, constitute spam? 

Why would the recipient server(s) interpret the messages as spam?  Is 
there something in the contents that make it walk/talk/taste the life?  
Unless perhaps 500 of these are going to the same business/domain and 
this raises an alert - I don't know.  With the SPAM filtering service I 
use there are default configs, then custom configs for allow/deny, 
content filtering, etc.  It seems to me how it gets interpreted will 
depend on the email service/configuration/tolerances.  I don't get much 
spam because I have added "%" and "OFF" as content to be rejected if it 
comes in the subject line.

20/hr - Common hosting providers will allow 200-500 for sending.  Here 
you check with the particular provider and set up throttling to remain 
under the limit.

One of the savvier network folks can better answer the question.

-Bob