Overview
Email marketing and bulk mail services like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, and JangoMail enable individuals to deliver the same email message to thousands of individuals at once. Many companies use these services to conduct marketing campaigns or deliver monthly newsletters. Some individuals and groups at Pitt have also tried using these services to distribute information to a list of University of Pittsburgh contacts.
Email delivered through these services is very likely to be quarantined as spam by the filtering solutions in use at many schools and organizations. This includes the University's Enterprise Spam and Virus Filter service.
Detail
Several factors contribute to the quarantining of mail that is sent through these services. One issue is the large volume of messages that these services deliver. Another is the fact that email messages sent through these services are distributed by external email servers that may have a reputation of sending spam.
Individuals or departments interested in sending email messages to a large group of contacts might consider using the University’s Read Green service as an alternative. Read Green enables departments to send email messages to all University faculty and staff, or to a subset of that audience. Mailings can be restricted by campus, department, gender, employee type, and other categories. Email messages sent via Read Green can also contain a link to a PDF file with additional details. To request a Read Green mailing, please use the University Mailing Services’ online form (PDF).