Automated Email List Services

An automated email list service is an email tool for sending email messages to a large group. It is often used in place of an EagleMail group when the size of that group exceeds the restriction of 25 email recipients per message. Eastern Michigan University uses the Mailman automated email list service system.

There are two types of automated email list services in use:

• Discussion email lists
• Announcement only email lists

Discussion Email Lists

Discussion email lists facilitate email discussions about a topic. In a discussion email list, anyone can post a message to the list, anyone can reply, and all the members of the list will see it. Discussion email lists are cumbersome to manage. They are often hard to follow.

Announcement Only Email Lists

Announcement only email lists are used to send one-way email communications to a list of individuals. The members of the group are subscribed (entered) by the list admin. Only authorized senders can send emails to the group, and groups members can respond directly to the sender, but not to the entire group. Most email lists at Eastern Michigan are the non-discussion type.

Visit the Email List Contact Information page for more information and instructions on how to request an automated email list.

Sometimes people refer to these automatic email lists as "listservs". The term LISTSERV® is a registered trademark of L-Soft (L-Soft International, Inc.) which is the exclusive provider of LISTSERV-brand mailing list management software and more. See http://www.lsoft.com.