After researching dozens of list servers for emailing our entire congregation, I found Pommo. It’s a wonderfully free software that takes a bit of tech experience to get running. You can import all your contacts, add whatever information to each field, create check boxes for different lists, filter the lists down to groups, and many more cool things. Basically, I log on to pommo, click mailing, select my recipient group, fill in my subject line, who it’s from, a reply address, select a programmed template (you have to create your own via FrontPage or your own HTML editor) and then send a test email to myself to make sure it’s perfect. Once I’ve done that I hit send mail, and I reach over 700 people in one click. The difference between using this software and using your Outlook software is that this sends 700 different emails rather than one email to 700 people (this is referred to as SPAMMING). Some of the greatest features of this software is that people can unsubscribe if they don’t want your emails, and you can personalize each email you send out based on whatever information is in their data record, (i.e. First Name, ministry group, etc.). This has made a huge difference in how we communicate with the church. Read past the screenshots for tech advice on installing this.
Tech Advice:
You will need to download the zip file containing the software.
Expand it to a directory on your hard drive.
Create a directory on your web server and upload the contents to that web directory. (I used a sub-domain - mailings.mydomain.com - ask your hosting provider for more information how to do this with your domain).
Once you’ve uploaded everything, you need to go to your control panel and find where you can add a MYSQL database. Get the server address, database name, user name, and password. You will need to add these to the config file. 

Open the file called config.sample.php and find where you input the database information. Then save this file as config.php and upload it to your web directory.
Next, open your browser, go to: http://www.yourdomain.com/pommodirectory/install
The software will do an automatic install from here out. Have fun. Visit pommo.org for more information and support.


