Mailing List Enhancements

Problem reported by Richard Laliberte - 4/13/2026 at 2:29 PM

Submitted

So I've discussed this with SM in the past, but was told to put it out to the forums to see if there is enough interest in expanding mailing list capabilities. I sat on it for a while because honestly the client to-do lists never seem to shrink.

But, here are some options we would like to see added to mailing lists.

1) Subscriber Management - Right now, we have our mailing lists built into our CMS, so i can categorize subscribers and such. But at the end of the day, the live in 1 list on smartermail. In order for use to send a campaign to a sub-set of users, i have to create a whole new list and add all the desired users to that list. depending on the number of users, for some reason, this takes FOREVER. Then my server is cluttered with a bunch of lists i only needed once... if i could assign tags to everyone, then it's still one list, and if they un-subscribe then it's still only from one list. This would be very helpful.

2) Re-send to anyone who hasn't opened the first email. I realize this one is a bit trickier as smartermail only tracks bounces, but we do track opens and clicks via our CMS, so it would be nice to be able to offer (in select situations) the ability to pass a list of users who haven't opened the campaign yet, so that SM can re-send the campaign to those specific individuals.

3) Resolve Sending Issues - So this one I've brought up a few times with SM, but never got anywhere. We send out some fairly large campaigns for a client (restaurant). we have updates for 40,000 users on their list (not huge...) but when we leave our spam checking settings in place, the server seem to bog right down, like it's scanning each of the 40,000 emails one at a time for spam (at least as best as we can tell at this point). ideally we'd like to see if scan just once (the initial send email) and that's it...

I know it's a long shot with everything going on at SM right now, but these updates would really help. Many of our mailing list clients are tired of being gouged by big mail providers that charge for 100+ features they will never use.

If anyone has any other feedback, would love to hear it.

6 Replies

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John Quest Replied

4/13/2026 at 2:54 PM

Having been involved with email servers for about 25 years now, here is my 2 cents:

This is way outside the scope of an email server.

For the quantities you are looking at, there is a lot of moving parts involved in sending out bulk email, which is what that is. Bulk Emails.

Plus, very simple, you NEVER want your main email server to be involved anywhere near bulk emailing, so that WHEN (not if) a problem occurs and a blacklisting occurs, it will not affect your main email server.

Richard Laliberte Replied

4/13/2026 at 7:31 PM

I'm not overly worried about the blacklist, we have most of our clients set pretty strict, we don't open this functionality up to just random people, and we keep our lists as clean as we can, with open rates in the 60 - 80% range on average. plus we have most of our stuff split up for regular mail vs mailing lists and so forth. We've been doing this for years as well and not had many issues (none if you don't count Microsoft, but even without mailing lists MS is a pain in the back side some days...)

SM also has a good deal of features already in place for mailing lists, just missing a few advances we would like to see that would really make this handy for our clients (and potentially others out there). I'm not saying stop the presses on everything and focus strictly here, just saying since a lot of features are already there, could we please get a couple extra.

YS Tech Replied

4/14/2026 at 4:24 AM

Sorry to jump on your post with my request ;o) but it is relevant, I think.

It would be really handy to have a report on delivery rates on any given email sent to a mailing list.

I have a few clients that use the mailing list feature for "fast news" for members of their clubs. They'd love to see if these people are receiving the emails, if they are opening them and if they are clicking on any of the links.

If there was something in the API I could call upon even, so i can build a report for them.

Ideally i'd like:

1) Delivered / Bounced / Undelivered error (I know each user shows a bounce in the list)

2) Opened / Not Opened / when they opened (so they can target when people most read them)

3) Clicked / No links clicked / which links are clicked

I know i can get this from dedicated bulk mailing systems, but it would be handy if I didn't have to port everything over to a third party system.

Thanks

Richard Laliberte Replied

4/14/2026 at 5:33 AM

@YS, we actually have our own CMS track the extras like opened and clicks, but those would be nice features to have right inside the mailing list system. Hopefully accessible by API so i can pull the data into our system.

YS Tech Replied

4/14/2026 at 5:35 AM

@Richard how does it track, do you send your mails through the CMS system?

Douglas Foster Replied

4/14/2026 at 6:33 AM

I have to agree with @JLaDow

1) You should configure a standalone system to handle your outbound bulk emails. SmarterMail Free would be one option, but it could be anywhere on any platform.

2) Your database application should decide which addresses get a message, then it should submit those messages to the dedicated email server, using a submission protocol (SMTP client or API). It makes no sense to use a script to create a one-time mailing list, and then send to that list in a separate step. Putting tags on subscribers to a mailing list is simply a bad idea which will never satisfy your needs, because SM is not a Customer Relationship Management system. CRM is what Salesforce does. If your CMS is not an adequate CRM, you should find one that is, or just steer the customer to SalesForce. I am pretty sure that they have a reseller program, so you could keep yourself in the middle.

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