What module should I use in Drupal for emailing the union membership?
My union uses Drupal (4.6.3) for our website. One thing we haven't yet integrated into the site is emailing the union members. We send regular emails to our members (approximately weekly), to keep them up to date about developments in negotiations, upcoming meetings, etc. Currently someone has to go to the computer in the union office to send an email.
I'd like to be able to send emails to our membership via the web using a Drupal module. I know there are a few that do mail lists and such, but we have specific needs and I'm not sure which, if any, best serve our needs. I'm looking for some advice! I'd also be open to a non-Drupal solution that is fairly easy to install, set up and maintain.
I don't want to create mailing list where people can unsubscribe themselves. Since the union is obligated to keep all members informed of what the union is doing, we don't want people to be able to easily opt out of receiving emails. I think that rules out some of the better free, standalone solutions like Mailman or Dadamail (correct me if I'm wrong).
Not all our members are registered with an account on the website, so modules that just email all the website subscribers / members wouldn't work. We need something where we can continually import the updated email list from our database, and email to that list.
Anyone have any thoughts or advice?
Mail module
There are two module I'm aware of.
First, there is the mail module. The only caveat for using that is that each member must have a user account in Drupal. See http://drupal.org/node/10227.
Your other option is the simplenews module. You can easily subscribe and unsubscribe users yourself. As far as I know, you can prevent users from unsubscribing themselves. See: http://drupal.org/node/10227
Let me know how it goes.
Re: Mail module
We use GNU Mailman. All of the mailing list management is web based. There is a Drupal module called Drupal Mailman Manager that is a HEAD version.