[thelist] Sending Bulk Email
Bob Meetin
bobm at dottedi.biz
Tue Oct 13 12:32:54 CDT 2009
Fred Jones wrote:
> I have a client who has a list of several thousand emails. He wants to
> send them a one time email, offering his services. AFAIK it's not
> spam, because he will only send it once.
>
> But there's around a thousand or two for each domain, so if we just
> send them all at once (via a simple custom PHP script) perhaps the
> recipient server will take offense and stop them.
>
> So we thought to send 20 every hour from 9 am to 6 pm via cron. Then
> they will not look suspicious.
>
> Sounds reasonable?
>
> Even though this whole idea sounds like spam, I personally am willing
> to do this job because I don't think it really will be considered
> spam--the addresses are somewhat targeted and the letter is very
> friendly, basically offering his services if they're interested, and
> if not, they can ignore it.
>
> Thanks.
>
This brings up a question - regardless of whether or not it is done
repetitively, does sending out bulk messages like this, even a one-time
invitation/offer, constitute spam?
Why would the recipient server(s) interpret the messages as spam? Is
there something in the contents that make it walk/talk/taste the life?
Unless perhaps 500 of these are going to the same business/domain and
this raises an alert - I don't know. With the SPAM filtering service I
use there are default configs, then custom configs for allow/deny,
content filtering, etc. It seems to me how it gets interpreted will
depend on the email service/configuration/tolerances. I don't get much
spam because I have added "%" and "OFF" as content to be rejected if it
comes in the subject line.
20/hr - Common hosting providers will allow 200-500 for sending. Here
you check with the particular provider and set up throttling to remain
under the limit.
One of the savvier network folks can better answer the question.
-Bob
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