What is a distribution list?

A distribution list (DL) can be used to send emails to a group of people without having to enter each recipient's individual address.

Exchange DLs are used to send to College email addresses only, while a Mailman DL can be used to send to both internal and external (non-Imperial) email addresses.

An example of an Exchange DL is ‘ic-staff-dl’ (called Imperial College Staff), which allows us to send Staff Briefing to all staff.

Only Exchange DLs are compatible with Poppulo – we will set your account up so it syncs every 24 hours and your DL in Poppulo will always be up to date.

I already use an Exchange DL to send my newsletter

Perfect – please send us the name of the DL.

I don’t use an Exchange DL currently

If you send your newsletter to a large group of staff such as a whole department, it is likely that a DL already exists set up by ICT. Please contact the Service Desk to check.

Otherwise, you will need to request an Exchange distribution list from ICT via ASK. You will need the individual email addresses of everyone you will send your newsletter to in order to create a DL.  

Please send us the name of the DL when you have it.

Do I need extra DLs if I sometimes email a subsection of my main DL?

No. In Poppulo, you can send your newsletter to a subsection of people within the DL by running a saved search. For instance, if you were sending a newsletter to a DL that contained the emails of all staff in the Department of Chemistry, you could select to send your newsletter only to the academic staff in that DL.

What happens next?

Once you have given us the name of your Exchange DL, we will check with ICT that you have permission to send to it. If you don’t, we may ask you to seek permission from ICT.

We will let you know once we have added your DL to your Poppulo account.

Find out more information about distribution lists, including how to set up and manage them.