Bridgewebs sends out over half a million automated emails each year.

In order to handle this, these emails are processed by a commercial specialist Email Service Provider. There are a number of aspects to this.

• It is very important to ensure that the quality of Emails sent is such that they are not identified as spam. Bridgewebs has a certain format, but it is up to the club to only send genuine Club information structured in a non-Spam way.
• It is important to ensure that members have given you their correct email and have OPTED IN to receive automated emails from Bridgewebs.
• It is important that emails are only sent to genuine recipients. Even today, perfectly genuine emails to perfectly genuine members sent from Bridgewebs get marked by the recipient as spam 2 or 3 times a week, increasing the likelihood of Bridgewebs emails being Blacklisted.
• There is a cost to Bridgewebs for the service, a fraction of a 1p per email, but it does add up and to date has been included without charge within the standard annual subscription.
• All emails have to be sent from a Bridgewebs validated account, currently members@bridgewebsemail.com. Any other email may be construed as Spam
• If emails are bounced, these have to be investigated to identify whether there is a pattern and a particular Email service e.g.. aol.com, hotmail.com has blacklisted Bridgewebs.

Quality of Emails

• Several formats have been tried in an attempt to present a non spam view of the email
• It is necessary to provide a "Reply To" address to encourage recipients to use that, rather than reply to members@bridgewebsemail.com which is not monitored and will simply end up in a Black Hole.
• Every email has an "Unsubscribe" button to allow users to "Unsubscribe", part of the Bulk Email standards. Why they would "Unsubscribe" when they have opted in to receive genuine information from the club is not known, but an average of 20 a month do. If they do "Unsubscribe", this is a global Bridgewebs setting and they will not receive any emails until they are removed from the "Unsubscribed" list. A club administrator can remove an "Unsubscribe" entry through the "WebAdmin" - "Membership" - "Email Members" - "View Log" option.

Cost of Email Service

There are several costs to providing this service and, to date, the cost of sending a reasonable level of bulk emails is included free of charge in the annual subscription. A reasonable level is currently 5000 emails per year. If near or over 10000 emails per year are sent from one club, then an additional charge may be added to the annual subscription, currently £10 or multiple thereof. This is subject to further review.

Enhancements

At present, Bulk Email is only available through WebAdmin or by selected Members having access to the Membership Admin..

Having said that, a number of clubs have indicated that, where/if necessary, they would be willing to pay for additional bulk email as they consider it a useful part of their club activities

Therefore, extra features are being considered for a future release to allow emails to be sent direct by members. There is more to this than simply sending emails.

• Monitoring the activity to avoid misuse
• Formatting the emails to avoid being misinterpreted
• Logging to provide statistics