2. What will my readers see on their From: header? Where will replies go?
Every newsletter service allows you to set a specific email address as the From: address seen by your readers. Take some time to pick a good one, using the From: Address link in your admin interface.
• Your From: address needs to be a valid address, one which actually gets read, because any replies to your mailings will come to that address (including usually several Out-of-office autoreplies after each mailing). A good way to do this is to configure a From: address which forwards to or is an alias for your real address, e.g., editor@yourdomain.com, which is an alias for your real address.
• DO NOT use @gmail.com, @aol.com, or @yahoo.com addresses in your From: address. Those ISPs (and perhaps others soon) have published email policies which tell mail servers to reject any mail with such From: address which did not actually come from those ISPs' mail servers.
• Try to avoid changing your From: address once it's been used. While spam filters don't initially give a lot of weight to the From: address, they DO if it is found in the recipient's contact list. So if your readers have previously whitelisted (put it in their contact list) your From: address, changing it may cause your next mailings to get filtered.
• Whether you submit mailings through the admin interface or mail them in to your list's special control- address, the From: address you specify will always appear on delivered messages - and thus that's where all replies (including auto-replies) will go.