Mail Lists Overview
Understanding Mail Lists in Hail Mail
This article explains the different types of mail lists available in Hail Mail and how they work together to manage your subscriber communications.'
What are Mail Lists?
Mail lists are groups of email contacts that receive your newsletters, articles, and publications. Think of them as organised address books — each list serves a specific audience or purpose, allowing you to send targeted communications to the right people.
Types of Mail Lists
Hail Mail supports several types of mail lists depending on your organisation's integrations and needs:
Hail Mail Lists
Standard mailing lists you create and manage directly within Hail. These are fully customisable and can be used for any audience — staff newsletters, media contacts, alumni updates, or any other group you define. You have complete control over who gets added, removed, and how the list is organised.
Alumni Lists
Specialised lists designed specifically for alumni communications. These lists appear separately in your Hail Mail interface and are ideal for maintaining connections with former students or members. Alumni lists work identically to standard Hail Mail lists but are organized separately for easier management.
SMS Integration Lists
If your organisation uses a Student Management System (SMS) or other integrated platform, those subscriber lists automatically appear within your Hail Mail account. These lists sync contact information directly from your SMS provider — saving you from manual data entry and keeping information up to date automatically.
Supported SMS integrations include: - Hero - Kamar - FACTS (formerly known as PCSchool) - Edge - eTAP - Wonde
Contact information from these systems syncs automatically based on your integration settings, which you can configure in the SMS Integration Settings.
CareerWise Lists
Organizations using CareerWise see their subscriber lists integrated directly into Hail Mail. These lists sync automatically from your CareerWise account, allowing you to send Hail content to your career services audiences without duplicate contact management.
How Lists Work Together
You can send a single article or publication to multiple lists simultaneously — simply select all relevant lists when publishing. Hail automatically deduplicates email addresses, ensuring contacts who appear on multiple lists only receive one copy of your communication.
List Statistics and Monitoring
Each list displays its current contact count in the Hail Mail interface. :
The main dashboard shows:
- Total subscribers across all lists
- Available subscriber slots (based on your plan)
- Recent delivery and engagement rates for each list
- Issues requiring attention (bounced or unsubscribed contacts)
Lists with zero contacts don't appear in filtering options but remain available when adding new subscribers, making it easy to build new lists from scratch.