The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[address@concealed]

     address@concealed recently wrote (in part):

> we use Sympa 5.3.3 to send about 40.000 newsletter emails every
> month... sometimes we need to send an email to a specific
> sub-group

     At the University where I work, we are increasingly getting
     more and more requests similar to this from the
     administration.  The problem is that Sympa, for all its
     features, is still pretty much a traditional Mailing List
     Management (MLM) system designed to host discussion lists.
     This is not a slam against Sympa at all, it is doing well
     exactly what it was designed to do.

     There are products, like Lyris, which are designed to carry
     out what could be termed "e-mail campaigns".  Lyris, and no
     doubt other commercial products, are designed to do this
     very sort of thing being requested here, as well as allowing
     for "mail merge" sorts of functions where postings can be
     address to "Dear Joe" rather than "Dear Subscriber",
     providing custom, per subscriber web links, etc.

     And then there are Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
     packages which are designed to do this and more, often
     integrating things like Help Desk support, sales lead
     tracking, market analysis, etc.

     To me the question is, should Sympa be moving in the
     direction of supporting E-Mail Campaign functionality, or
     instead try and concentrate on being a best of breed
     traditional MLM?

     I don't know the answer to that question; I'd rather host a
     traditional MLM, but am getting more requests for *cough*
     spamming people outside the University.  It would be nice to
     have one package that I'm familiar with to do it all, but
     worry about feature creep and loss of focus for Sympa's core
     mission.

                                                    ...BC

--
+-------------------------[ address@concealed ]---+
| Bill Costa                                       |  No good
| 1 Leavitt Lane                 Voice:            |   deed...
|   CIS/Telecom -- 2nd Floor       +1-603-862-3056 |
|   University of New Hampshire                    |  Goes
| Durham, NH  03824       USA                      |   unpunished.
+---------------[ http://pubpages.unh.edu/~wfc/ ]--+