How bulk email works
The following information is about bulk email. There are many sides of bulk emailing from the logistics of performing an email campaign to the moral issues of bulk e-mail.

Electronic mail, or email, might be the most heavily used feature of the Internet. Millions of people send and receive email everyday. Email is a great way to keep up with relatives, friends, co-workers in different branches of your company and colleagues in your field. Bulk email is a powerful marketing medium but also a controversial issue in the Internet community.

The following addresses the logistic side of the process of bulk email and we leave the moral side to you. Bulk e-mail in itself did not start out as a term for unethical email marketers but a term for sending out mass or bulk email to a large group of people.

Bulk email messages are sent in the same way as most Internet data. The TPC protocol breaks your email messages into packets, the IP protocol delivers the packets to the proper location, and then the TPC reassembles the message on the receiving mail server so it can be read. Bulk email requires special software that takes each individual email address from that bulk email list, and sends one message to each email address. Contrary to what most bulk email software manufactures claim, all bulk email software requires a lot of bandwidth and heavy use of computer resources.

When you send email to someone, that message often has to travel through a series of networks before it reaches the recipient, and some networks might use different email formats. Gateways perform the job of translating e-mail formats from one network to another so that the messages can make their way through all the networks of the Internet.

A bulk email list is one of the most interesting uses of email broadcasting. It connects a group of people, who have common interests, by their email address. When one person sends e-mail to the bulk email list, that message is automatically sent to everyone on that list, hence bulk email. You can meet others and talk to them on a regular basis about your shared interests, hobbies, or professions. To get onto a professional email list, you send an e-mail note to the bulk mailing list administrator and include your email address to be added into the email list.

Bulk email lists can be moderated or unmoderated. A moderated email list is screened by the e-mail administrator, who might kill duplicate bulk e-mail messages or messages not related to the list's theme. An unmoderated bulk mail list is wide open; all email sent to it is automatically sent to everyone on the bulk email list.

Contrary to the misconception that bulk email costs nothing—it does. The use of bandwidth and resources that all bulk email companies use can be added up to thousands of dollars every month. When an ethical bulk email company receives your request to be removed, they know that you are not a customer that will buy or use their services, and therefore, they should remove you from receiving future messages.