[thelist] Sending Bulk Email

[Jon Molesa]

*On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 07:10:47PM +0200 Fred Jones <fredthejonester at gmail.com> wrote:

> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:10:47 +0200
> From: Fred Jones <fredthejonester at gmail.com>
> Subject: [thelist] Sending Bulk Email
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> 
> 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.

Presumably he aquired the list with each recipient's permission.  In
which case it's not considered spam, IMHO.

> 
> 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.

Depending on how their server is configured, it very well may take
offense.

Aside from that, what type of connection are you planning to send this
from?  I would recommend against a home dsl/cable connection.  Sending
that many email, even staggered, from a residential connection will
certainly result in many rejects and possibly a blacklisting in one of
the DBL services.

It doesn't look good when the sending domain is example.com and the
sending server's actual host name is
customer-12-5q-hm.some-known-location.otherexample.com.  Unless, you
have spf records at the DNS level.  But there is still no garuntee that
the destination server will accept your mail.

If you control the dns, mailserver, and ip address you'll be sending
from and there is usually high volumes of email exiting you're host,
then go for it.  Otherwise look into a service such as constant contact,
or mailchimp.  They are whitelisted with the ISP's.  That'll give you a
higher degree of certainty that the mail made it to it's destination.
> 
> So we thought to send 20 every hour from 9 am to 6 pm via cron. Then
> they will not look suspicious.

That is polite and thoughtful.

> 
> 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.
> -- 
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-- 
Jon Molesa
rjmolesa at consoltec.net
if you're bored or curious
http://rjmolesa.com