[thelist] CFML Broadcast Email

[Seth Bienek]

Hey Matt,

There are a few different ways to go about doing this.

Cfmail is probably not the way to go if you are sending large quantities of
email.  Since it connects to the smtp server through the SMTP port, it does
not lend itself to a high number of transactions, and there are some
well-known reliability issues dealing with cfmail and large quantities of
email as well.

Instead, consider writing the emails into the mailserver queue, per SGD's
EXCELLENT article series on using mail servers with web applicaitons:
<http://www.evolt.org/article/Using_files_to_send_emails_with_IIS_part_1_of_
2/17/3419/index.html>
<http://evolt.org/article/Using_Files_to_Send_Emails_with_IIS_part_2_of_2/17
/3875/index.html>

His examples are in ASP, but the same could be done with CF fairly easily; I
even wrote a custom tag for this purpose:
<http://sethbienek.com/dfwcfug/cf_maildrop.zip>

If you do decide to use cfmail, for whatever reason, the contents of the CF
mail undeliverable folder (default: C:\CFUSION\MAIL\UNDELIVR) should get you
the info you need.

Otherwise, email has a mechanism built in for this.  Most email servers will
return a notification to the sender when an addressee no longer exists.  Set
up a new email address solely for the purpose of collecting bounced email,
and use that email address as the "reply-to" address of your broadcast
message.

The bummer is that you will have to manually go through the bounce notices
to get the addresses that need to be removed from your database. The reason
for this is that there is not a standard format for bounce notices (that I
am aware of).

As I mentioned earlier, there are other ways of doing this, particularly if
you don't mind annoying your recipients with HTML-formatted email.  But
that's another topic altogether.

I hope this gives you some ideas.

Regards,


Seth

------------------------------
Seth Bienek
Solutions Development Manager
Stonebridge Technologies, Inc.
972.455.7294 tel
972.404.9754 fax
ICQ #7673959
------------------------------

> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Matt Mozer
>
> Hey all,
> I have written below a broadcast email message in CFML that will query a
> live MS DB called mstcont.mdb in table promo1 (as written in the source
> below). This script has been tested and will send an email to about 3000
> email addresses I have stored in the DB. The question I have is
> that I need
> a way for CFML to send me back a response or confirmation stating whether
> the emails were sent or returned say in the subsystem. I am not
> totally sure
> that all the email addresses are current or still correct. Is
> there a way I
> can do this with CFML? Please write back if I am not being
> specific or clear
> enough.
>
> Thank You
>