...making Linux just a little more fun!
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
----- Forwarded message from Danny Holstein <dgholstein@embarqmail.com> -----
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:12:56 -0500 (EST) From: Danny Holstein <dgholstein@embarqmail.com> To: ben@linuxgazette.net Subject: email post on LGBen;
I read a post of yours on mass emailing on Linux Gazette -- I found the post since I was looking for information on mall emailing in Linux. Since we have a small gourmet foods shop in New Jersey and have compiled a customer list of nearly 1000 emails, we figured we'd use it to announce a sale and specials; nothing nefarious about our intentions. It turns out kmail and evolution aren't well-suited to the task, a significant proportion of emails have been changed (earthlink/mindspring -> embarqmail), mistyped into the database, or have simply been abandoned; we got about a 15% bounce rate.
I imagine a good mass mailer would have hooks for database import (MySQL on a LAMP server) and have a means for "fixing" the database based on bounces and "UNSUBSCRIBE" requests.
Regards;
Danny Holstein
----- End forwarded message -----
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
René Pfeiffer [lynx at luchs.at]
On Feb 23, 2009 at 1306 -0500, Ben Okopnik appeared and said:
> ----- Forwarded message from Danny Holstein > <dgholstein@embarqmail.com> ----- > > Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:12:56 -0500 (EST) > From: Danny Holstein <dgholstein@embarqmail.com> > To: ben@linuxgazette.net > Subject: email post on LG > > Ben; > > I read a post of yours on mass emailing on Linux Gazette -- I found > the > post since I was looking for information on mall emailing in Linux. > Since > we have a small gourmet foods shop in New Jersey and have compiled > a > customer list of nearly 1000 emails, we figured we'd use it to > announce a > sale and specials; nothing nefarious about our intentions. It > turns out > kmail and evolution aren't well-suited to the task, a significant > proportion of emails have been changed (earthlink/mindspring -> > embarqmail), mistyped into the database, or have simply been > abandoned; we > got about a 15% bounce rate. > > I imagine a good mass mailer would have hooks for database import > (MySQL > on a LAMP server) and have a means for "fixing" the database based > on > bounces and "UNSUBSCRIBE" requests.
http://www.openemm.org/ might be interesting. There was a review in a German GNU/Linux magazine a few months ago.
Best, René.
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 01:06:52PM -0500, Danny Holstein wrote:
> > I read a post of yours on mass emailing on Linux Gazette -- I found the > post since I was looking for information on mall emailing in Linux. Since > we have a small gourmet foods shop in New Jersey and have compiled a > customer list of nearly 1000 emails, we figured we'd use it to announce a > sale and specials; nothing nefarious about our intentions. It turns out > kmail and evolution aren't well-suited to the task, a significant > proportion of emails have been changed (earthlink/mindspring -> > embarqmail), mistyped into the database, or have simply been abandoned; we > got about a 15% bounce rate.
Neither of the above is very surprising, of course; GUI clients tend not to be very useful for script-type processing, and link rot/email rot occurs at a steady pace.
> I imagine a good mass mailer would have hooks for database import (MySQL > on a LAMP server) and have a means for "fixing" the database based on > bounces and "UNSUBSCRIBE" requests.
This might be a bit of a paradigm shift - but I would consider using a mailing list instead of trying to cobble together a solution. It's got all the features you're looking for (unsub/bounce/defer/reject handling, etc.), and most of them use, or can use, a database as a back end.
What we use here is Mailman, one of the most popular list managers out there. As far as I know, it stores its member data in text files - but it can use MySQL via the "MySQL Member Adaptor":
http://loeki.tv/log/archives/81-Setting-[...]o-store-members-in-a-MySQL-database.html http://trac.rezo.net/trac/rezo/browser/Mailman/MySQLMemberAdaptor
Although with only 1000 members, I wouldn't bother. Even if you grow significantly, Mailman can handle it without any trouble. I've heard of people running it with ~20k subscribers, and they have no complaints.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *
Danny Holstein [dgholstein at embarqmail.com]
Thanks, sometimes the solution is "right under the nose" -- since we use OpenSuse, I can simply install mailman from the distribution. Of course, since it's in Python, it may not be too difficult to use PyODBC to access our database.
Regards, ...Dan
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 05:58:05PM -0500, Danny Holstein wrote:
> Thanks, sometimes the solution is "right under the nose" -- since we > use OpenSuse, I can simply install mailman from the distribution. Of > course, since it's in Python, it may not be too difficult to use > PyODBC to access our database.
That's a lovely thing about Linux. 
Pretty much everything and
anything is there, already in the repositories. Glad I could help, and
good luck!
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *