sending a mail by a script

[moshemc]

Hi,

I have a database (MySQL), including 100 customers, their emails and names.
I'm planning to write a script which automatically sends email to them, (a loop that handles with "mail" function).
I would prefer to send it by including their private name inside the content (by using a variable).
Should I send a separated email for each customer?
If not - How many accounts should I put in the "to" field without to be considered as a spam?

Thanks

 

[Mike Lewis]

Moshemc,

Unlike most of the people in the forum, I'm not a PHP expert - merely a beginner and lurker. However, I have been on the receiving end of the type of email you are describing.

The obvious solution is not to put the recipients in the "To" line, but rather in the "BCC". Listing them in the "To" is a gross breach of privacy, and your customers will justifiably be annoyed. They are less likely object if you use "BCC" instead.

As for whether or not it's considered spam, that depends on who is doing the considering. If you only send the message to your existing customers, and if you have a genuine reason for sending it (such as a change in your business terms), no-one could reasonably object. But that doesn't mean that it won't be trapped by an over-zealous spam filter.

As for whether to send one message to 100 people, or to send a separate message to each, I doubt if it makes much difference (except the latter opens more scope for personalisation).

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[thedaver]

moshemc;

There are literally TONS of scripts published on the web to send email to distribution lists. If you're pursuing a legal email campaign, I would strongly urge you to learn from/use any number of the scripted examples on the 'net.

As to the sending...

It would be MOST optimal from a mail server standpoint to send the least number of emails per destination domain.

Think about it this way, if you have 7 of your 100 recipients at Yahoo mail, your software should send one email - with recipients either as TO or BSS - to the Yahoo mail server. Thus your 49K email payload is sent to Yahoo ONCE!

Let's be honest here that the bandwidth probably doesn't matter, but you should be considerate of the transaction volume as well - on both ends. If you can optimize the sending, that helps you too.

D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[moshemc]

Thank you for answering me.

I understand the reason for not sending the email 100 hundred times. I'd like to know if there any way to send a personalized email ("hello <private_name>") even though I do not send it to each one separately.

Thanks again!

 

[thedaver]

Yeah, sure, templates are an easy way to accomplish this for most any output when you have a database backend.

%%date%%

Dear %%firstname%%

Because you bought our %%priorpurchase%% before I wanted to tell you about our related product, the %%suggestion%%.



Pretty common stuff... is there a way? Yes.

Can you send it personalized using the bulk-friendly sending suggestions? No. You'll be forced to write the email per recipient using their details and will have to send one-per-recipient.






D.E.R. Management - IT Project Management Consulting

http://www.dermanagement.com/

 

[jpadie]

Most campaign software will want to track each email via unique recipient ID's. and from a marketing perspective it's a good idea to personnalise each email offering.

in such a case you have no choice but to send the email individually each time. don't embed images in the email however, leave their references as internet refs. that way the payload should be minimal.

For newsletters where the content is 100% static, BCC'ing recipients seems sensible.

Always use phpmailer for this kind of stuff on php. takes all the slog out of it.