Alternative Delimiters in an HTML Message Body

Purpose

This example demonstrates how to use alternative delimiters in an HTML message body.

Prepared Example Files

The archive contains three files:

AltHTMLDelimiters.bat - The batch file that will instruct NetMailBot to send the email message.
data.txt - the data file holding the email addresses and names to send to
msg.html - an HTML message body for personalization

File Contents

This is the content of the batch file:

netmailbot -to test@test.com -from test@test.com -server smtp.mycompany.com -logfile c:\tmp\log.txt -dsn "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=D:\AltHTMLDelimiters\;Extended properties=Text;" -dbquery "SELECT * FROM data.txt" -dbemailcolumn "to" -dbreplacementids "$firstname$=firstname,$lastname$=lastname" -bodyfile "msg.html" -personalize -debug

This is the content of the data.txt file:

to,firstname,lastname

joe.blow@test.com,Joe,Blow

suzie.q@test.com,Suzie,Q

bob.smith@test.com,Bob,Smith

This is the content of the msg.html file:

<html>

<body>

Dear $firstname$ $lastname$,<br><br>

Here is your monthy newsletter!

</font>

</body>

</html>

Steps

Unzip the AltHTMLDelimiters.zip file. This will produce a directory called "AltHTMLDelimiters". Open this directory.
Open Notepad and edit the batch file "AltHTMLDelimiters.bat". Change the values of the parameters -to, -from, and -server to two test email addresses of your choosing and your mail server. Depending on where you unzip the file, you may have to adjust the DSN string as well (the batch file assumes D:)
Edit the data.txt file to contain at least one legitimate email address to which you have access, so that you can verify the results of the operation.
Invoke the batch file by double-clicking the icon or straight from the command line.
NetMailbot should start up and, upon finishing, the email addresses specified in the data file should each receive a customized email message.