[Mailman-Users] Mailman a good fit for bulk mailing?

[Bryan Field-Elliot]

I run a website wherein potential customers are volunteering their email
addresses in order to receive product updates, etc. Again, just to be
clear -- I run an *opt-in* mailing list of ads for a company.

We've gotten started with Mailman (2.0.8), and while it's a great
discussion engine, it doesn't seem to be very well suited for bulk
mailing etc. For example, I was asked, "how do I know which people have
received which mailings, etc.?", and of course I had no good answer
based upon Mailman's capabilities.

My questions are:
1. Are there features or usage patterns of Mailman (2.0.8) which are
recommended for my use cases?

2. Will Mailman 2.1 have more features in this area?

3. Is there some other package entirely which I should be looking at,
rather than Mailman? (GPL or similarly-licensed, preferably).

Thank you,

Bryan