I've got a list of 6,000 e-mail addresses (in text format) of
customers that have purchased goods off of me in the past year and I
want to write a quick
e-mail thanking them all for their support over my first year in
business and to wish them happy Christmas.

I only want to mail them once and although I could use mailing list
software, I don't want it to look like they're on a mailing list (this
is extremely important as I don't want it to look like I'm spamming my
own customers).

Ideally, the e-mail would look as though it was sent to that one person alone.

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Clarification of Question by chrisholgate-ga on 17 Dec 2003 05:22 PST

Sorry, I forgot to mention; we have no money to pay for expensive software!

Hi chrisholgate!
   
This should do it...
   
"Email Templates is an extension to Microsoft Outlook and is designed
to easily send personalized messages rapidly to individuals and to
multiple recipients.
[..]
Email Templates reads the incoming profile of a sender and allows you
to obtain personalized aspects of the sender such as first name and
email address. This can be used to add a personal touch to your email,
making your emails seem friendlier while maintaining a professional
appearance. Mass mailing using Email Templates is fast and easy,
enabling you to create the impression of individually tailored
messages. Long mailing lists will appear as individual and
personalized email to the recipient.[..]"
http://www.emailtemplates.com/et/overview.aspx
   
"The key to Email Templates? is that the product allows your emails to
be personalized in the text of the email rather than only in the TO:
recipient column or BCc: blind copy field (although it does that
too!)[..]
Email Templates? will give your prospects personalized email messages
and each prospect will think that they were the only potential
customer to receive your message (and you sent out 100 emails with
updates!) Well, you don't have to imagine!"
http://www.emailtemplates.com/et/samples.aspx
   
Email Templates costs $59, but you can download a FREE fully
functional 30 day, time-limited version!
    
You can download "Email Templates" from here:
http://www.emailtemplates.com/et/download.aspx
     
   
I hope you find this product suitable! 
    
If anything is unclear, feel free to ask for clarification before
rating answer and I'll try to assist further.
    
Merry Xmas!
  
JACKBURTON-ga
   
   
--------------------
Search strategy:
""send personal email to multiple"
""sending personal email to multiple"
"send personal email to many"
email multiple "personal touch"

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Clarification of Answer by jackburton-ga on 18 Dec 2003 12:36 PST

Also, you should be able to import the 6000+ email addresses with a
bit of scripting. You could probably use the bulkmail from file
template at http://www.emailtemplates.com/et/extensions.aspx if you
modified the file and the template.
  
I suggest you contact Technical Support (email:
support@emailtemplates.com), and send them the list (or an example of
what your list looks like). They should be able to advise.
  
(Thanks to alexus-ga and ldavinci-ga for their contributions!)

i could setup for you a mail server that would do all that

Hi chrisholgate-ga,
Actually sending email to a large list in the way you've mentioned and
setting up a mail server are trivial, compared to how you could get
those mails delivered securely.  Now that SPAM being a internet wide
phenomenon, Just imagine most of your customers are from a particular
domain, if you are sending them emails individually from a single or a
few email addresses, your mails might trigger the SPAM filter of their
particular ISP(or whomever that relays inbetween), preventing most of
your emails from being delivered.
What is the solution:
i) Use multiple email addresses on multiple domains and send emails over
a period of time, and not as bulk delivery.
ii) Identify the majority of the ISP's your customers have account with,
talk to them that you will be sending a one time bulk email to your valid
customers, and that you do not want it to be filtered out.

These are just some suggestions.

Regards
ldavinci-ga