e-mail in bulk

[woodpam]

I'm trying to send a bulk e-mail to companies in a business directory to see if they may want to offer a job or work experience to a young person. I can only get it to send the information as an attachment and it will not allow an ordinary message to be sent. Understandably, some people will be reluctant to open an attachment. Is there a way to do this without paying a small fortune to a marketing company? I can find lots of people who will do it for us but no instructions on how to do it ourselves. Can you help?

[Pinotage]

I send out a newsletter to several hundred people by using the address book facility - put all the recipients emails in the address book, put the name of the address book file a bcc and send to yourself. Everone on the bcc gets a copy without seeing the circulation list.

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But everyone with a published email gets so much spam nowadays that the vast majority of your emails are likely to be deleted without being read.

[Pinotage]

PS - get the young person/s themselves to do the emailing.

[wildwood]

If it is the actual information (letter or CV) you have trouble with, rather than compiling the addresses, here's a way that will allow you to - using outlook express.
Compile your whole mail in a html format using the same background as your outlook express (usually white). Copy the html document into MyComputer/C:/Program files/Common files/Microsoft shared/Stationery. Now open outlook express/message/new message/select(new)stationery and select the html file you have just put in there. Now every time you wish to send this document all you have to do is click it in 'new messages' and the whole mail appears, ready for an address. If you are going to use it for a while, you can even set it as your default mail.
Cheers.

[woodpam]

Thanks for your help. We found a way round this by saving our text as the e-mail signature, but will be trying the wildwood method. Thanks for the bcc tip pinotage, we had just had someone requesting anonymity (I'm sure Spellcheck will be on that one!) and changed to bcc-ing immediately.