[Mailman-Users] suggestion?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Rick.French writes:

 > Your software was suggested as a package that would assist the
 > handling of the task. I did download it but it will not work with
 > the windows s/w that I use as my op system.

There are many ISPs/hosting providers that offer Mailman as a service.
There is a good chance that one you already use does provide it, and
if not, competent providers for the level of service you describe are
available at reasonable prices (10s of dollars per month).  However,
make sure the provider actually supports the product; many install a
host management system (cPanel and Plesk are common), and leave the
rest up to you.  This is not a good situation for a business to be in.

Note that Mailman by itself is not a customer relations management
package.  While many people successfully use it for announcements, as
you would like to, it is primarily designed for users to subscribe and
unsubscribe themselves.  While this has its attractions in your use
case, you may also someday want to use the data gathered for other
purposes (eg, figuring what kinds of subscribers actually use your
services; what kinds have the highest satisfaction rate; etc).
Mailman provides no support for that kind of thing.  The data
associated with subscribers is extremely limited: name, email address,
and Mailman-related options (many of which would be irrelevant for an
announce list like yours).  Also, Mailman provides no built-in support
for periodic mailings or forms, nor linkage of mailings to other
databases.

I suggest you do a web search for "customer relations management" as
well as investigating Mailman providers.