For DrupalCamp CO 2011 we ran into a bit of a problem with how to send out an email to the local community about the camp. We had posted on groups.drupal.org in the relevant groups (there are about 6 groups in or near Colorado), tweeted, and talked about it in IRC, but we wanted to email people, people who may have not heard about the Camp on the existing mediums. We have email addresses from those who registered for the camp last year, and groups provides a group broadcast to its members, but if we used each of these methods separately we would be sure to send duplicates to some people. Duplicates make people mad. We don't want to make anyone mad! :)
Has anyone else run into this problem and if so how did you deal with it?
In our case, we collected all the email addresses from the various groups and the site last year, listed them, and removed duplicates. greggles could say exactly, but I believe he used the groups broadcast for many people, and then the rest (about 400) was split between a couple people to email from our individual gmail accounts. Obviously that isn't the best method, but it worked.
Given the desire to email addresses collected via different means I'm not sure a new solution for collecting emails is the best option for next time. A email list form on the drupalcamp website might collect a lot of people, but we may still want to email those people in gdo groups who didn't sign up for the email list.
Any insights or thoughts?