As developers and solution providers of Email and Collaboration software (Connect Xf), we get frequent requests for bulk mailing solutions. At first, let us differentiate between two types of bulk mailing:


Internal bulk mailing: This is mail sent to distribution lists of internal employees, agents, the staff of the extended enterprise, customers, partners, etc., where the recipients are known to the sender (and vice versa). In other words, this is just a way to reach out to a large group of co-workers in one stroke.


External bulk mail: Essentially used for promotions, is sent out as part of marketing or announcement campaigns to mostly users outside the enterprise, and is generally of a larger volume (sometimes with a fairly high rejection volume).

While an Enterprise mailing solution (one which handles the regular mail traffic of the organisation) will normally support the first type of bulk mail, it is not a very wise idea to use the same for sending bulk mail of the second type (though technically it may be possible to do so using the same tools offered for Internal Bulk mail).


Some of the key reasons, why you may not want to do this:

  1. External Bulk mail is normally sent to a large database, which would add to the sizing requirement of the corporate mailing solution, leading to larger investments in infrastructure and maintenance.
  2. Sending external bulk mailing is not just about having an outgoing mail (SMTP) server, but also about a full-blown application that handles mailing lists dynamically, can schedule the activities/campaigns, can send in batches, handles unsubscribe and bounces smoothly, etc. Typically a corporate mailing solution won’t offer these features since they are not commonly required for the normal mailing needs of an enterprise.
  3. Since sending external bulk mail is like fishing with a net, there are very good chances that the IPs of the outgoing relay servers would be blacklisted by spam cops or security appliances. If this happens for a corporate mailing solution, it could well hamper normal mailing as well (see also how Connect Xf protects against Internal spam attacks)


We recommend that our customers opt for the services of a specialized bulk mail provider, who hosts a setup conducive for sending external bulk mail. Some key elements of such a setup are

  • An infrastructure capable of sending large volumes of mail (MTA)
  • Bulk mailing Application to manage dynamic lists, unsubscribe, etc.
  • Technology and processes to prevent being blacklisted on spam cop sites