Mass Mailing Concepts

 

Mass mails are used for various purposes such as marketing campaigns, opt-in newsletters, field advisories (alerts to end users, support staff, sales people, etc. regarding changes to a product or newly discovered problems), and any other case in which an email message must be sent to a large number of recipients in a batch.

 

NetMailBot allows you to retrieve your mailing list from a database by way of a DSN connection to the database. Using various NetMailBot parameters discussed here, you can quickly send an email to many recipients.

 

In performing mass mailings, you have options to control both the number of recipients per email using -recipientliimit and how the email addresses retrieved from the database are addressesed - "To:", "Cc:", or "Bcc:" - using -dbuseaddresee. What you choose for -dbuseaddresee has an effect on how NetMailBot handles the limits specified with -recipientliimit, as described below.

 

NOTE: It is possible to implement a mass mailing without the use of a database; we have included, as a reminder of this, another example in this section which uses a simple text file list of "Bcc:" recipients instead of the database connectivity features.

 

NOTE: This section does not discuss the mail merge functionality of NetMailBot, which takes the mass mailing functionality discussed here a step further by personalizing the email for each recipient in the database. For such features, see the Mail Merges section.

 

Options for Controlling the Number of Recipients: -recipientlimit

 

A mass mailing can be "batch sent" in a few different ways. Suppose you have a database of 1000 email addresses. One strategy would be to send ten emails, each to 100 recipients. Another is to send 100 emails, each to ten recipients. Or, you could send 1000 emails, each to one recipient. Due to the fact that many SMTP servers limit the number of email addresses in the "To:" field to 100, it is unlikely that you could send one email to all 1000 recipients.

 

You can control the maximum number of recipients per individual email using -recipientlimit. A very common application of this parameter is when you want each recipient to receive an individually-addressed email (the third case listed above: 1000 emails, each to one recipient). If you omit -recipientlimit, NetMailBot's default limit on the number of recipients per email is 100, due to the fact that many SMTP servers tend to be configured with this as the limit anyway.

 

Options for Controlling How the Emails are Addressed: -dbuseaddressee

 

The database email addresses could be addressed as "To:", "Cc:", or "Bcc:" recipients - that is, the emails could be sent either directly to the recipients ("To:"), sent as Carbon Copies ("Cc:" - known "parallel" recipients to the "To:" recipient), or as Blind Carbon Copies ("Bcc:" - unknown "parallel" recipients to the "To:" recipient).

 

Here are some imagined example scenarios for these different types of addressing:

 

• To: MaryAnne, the VP of a particular sales division, uses company email addresses stored in a database to send an email to all of her 3rd party distributors concerning an upcoming Distributors Meeting. Using -dbuseaddressee "to", each recipient whose address is in the database receives an email "From:" MaryAnne and "To:" themselves and everyone else in the list (up to 100 emails in the "To:" field per sent email). Although -dbuseaddressee "to" adds email addresses to the "To:" field, the -to parameter is still required. To satisfy this, MaryAnne lists herself as the "To:" recipient.
• Cc: Bob, a District Manager under MaryAnne, knows that a particular topic at the Distributors Meeting will touch on work done by one of his direct reports, Jill, a Field Representative, and the distributors she routinely visits. He wants to discuss some aspects of the subject before the meeting. He sends an email "To:" Jill and retrieves the distributors' email addresses from the database (we assume it has a structure mirroring the sales territories, which allows him to automatically cull the correct addresses) and uses -dbuseaddressee "cc" to Carbon Copy ("Cc:") all of the distributors.
• Bcc: Jill has some special arrangements with several of the distributors in her area, but does not want each to know who the others are. She needs to send an update on these arrangements to reflect changes in the local market, so  she uses -dbuseaddressee "bcc" to send an appropriate email to the entire list of affected distributors at once, without each knowing the other recipients of the email.

 

You can control this addressing with the -dbuseaddressee parameter. This is in addition to the recipient you specify with the required parameter -to:

 

• -dbuseaddressee "to" adds each database email address to the "To:" field (the first address in the "To:" field comes from the -to parameter) up to the limit set manually by -recipientlimit or the default value of 100, which matches the maximum set by many SMTP servers.
• -dbuseaddressee "cc" puts the database email addresses into the "Cc:" field.
• -dbuseaddressee "bcc" puts the database email addresses into the "Bcc:" field.

 

-dbuseaddresee's Effect on -recipientlimit Count

 

How you have set -dbuseaddressee affects how NetMailBot handles addressing field limits. When using -dbuseaddressee "to", the address specified in the -to parameter is the first address put in the "To:" field, then the addresses from the database follow, up to the number of addresses specified with -recipientlimit, if specified (if not, the limit is 100, the default). Thus, there is one overall set of "To:" recipients, and the address specified with -to appears only in the first email.

 

If you use -dbuseaddressee "cc" or -dbuseaddressee "bcc", the address specified in the -to parameter is the addressee used in the "To:" field for each email, but it does not count toward any limit set with -recipientlimit. Instead, -recipientlimit only counts toward the addresses put into the "Cc:" or "Bcc:" field, that is, those from the database.

 

For example, let's assume you had 300 addresses in your database (for simplicity, let's say "001@xyz.com", "002@xyz.com", etc.) and your -to recipient was "joe@xyz.com". Using -dbu "to" and without specifying -recipientlimit, NetMailBot would send four emails to a total of 301 recipients. The output would look like:

 

Preparing message

Adding TO(1): joe@xyz.com

Adding TO(2): 001@xyz.com

Adding TO(3): 002@xyz.com 

...

Adding TO(100):099@xyz.com

Sending message

Sent to mail server

Preparing message

Adding TO(101): 100@xyz.com

Adding TO(102): 101@xyz.com 

Adding TO(103): 102@xyz.com

...

Adding TO(200):199@xyz.com

Sending message

Sent to mail server

Preparing message

Adding TO(201): 200@xyz.com 

Adding TO(202): 201@xyz.com 

Adding TO(203): 202@xyz.com

...

Adding TO(300):299@xyz.com

Sending message

Sent to mail server

Preparing message

Adding TO(301): 300@xyz.com

Sending message

Sent to mail server

Disconnecting

 

Mail sent successfully to 301 recipients 

 

If, instead, you used -dbu "cc", the output would look like:

 

Preparing message

Adding TO(1): joe@xyz.com

Adding CC(2): 001@xyz.com

Adding CC(3): 002@xyz.com 

Adding CC(4): 003@xyz.com

...

Adding CC(101): 100@xyz.com

Sending message

Sent to mail server

Adding TO(102): joe@xyz.com

Adding CC(103): 101@xyz.com

Adding CC(104): 102@xyz.com 

Adding CC(105): 103@xyz.com

...

Adding CC(202): 200@xyz.com

Preparing message

Sending message

Sent to mail server

Adding TO(203): joe@xyz.com

Adding CC(204): 201@xyz.com 

Adding CC(205): 202@xyz.com 

Adding CC(206): 203@xyz.com

...

Adding CC(303): 300@xyz.com

Sending message

Sent to mail server

 

Mail sent successfully to 303 recipients

 

Thus, in the latter case, the recipient limit of 100 (by default) only applies to the "Cc:" recipients.