Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

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bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

I've been using MailEnable for many years now and am very happy with it. The main site I use MailEnable with is BellaOnline.com. I have 400 topic areas here, and each topic area has its own email account that they can log in to and manage. It has worked very well.

Separately from this mail system, we have used a home created ASP solution for newsletters. This allows members to view all their newsletters in one members area, add and delete newsletters easily, and it allows the editors to send out newsletters to their members whenever they want.

The downside of the home grown system is maintaining the newsletter lists. Editors receive all the bouncebacks and over-quota messages and have to manage those manually. As our lists grow to be 10,000 emails and more, it can become a chore.

I have always been hesitate to put this all into MailEnable because my main BellaOnline server is a separate machine from my MailEnable server. It would require a lot of coordination to ensure that, when someone signed up in the members area to "watch" a topic area (let's say Quilting) that they also on the MailEnable server become a member of that Quilting list. Similarly if someone unsubscribed on the MailEnable side, I'd need to know to remove them from the members side as well.

Is anyone doing anything like this to have any suggestions? Can I get MailEnable, when it receives an "unsubscribe" request for example, to launch a script as part of its processing?

Lisa Shea

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

I guess this means nobody uses MailEnable to send newsletters? I'm not even sure how it would handle bouncebacks. I know Yahoo Groups for example puts members who bounce back into a holding category so you can examine them and determine how to deal with them. Do the lists do anything like that? Or do bounced back emails just get the member deleted, even if it's a "soft bounce" like a quota issue?

Lisa

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

First a bug to report - On the "header" tab for lists, the documentation below the entry box talks about "footers" twice. It should be talking about "headers" on the header tab.

Second, which also seems like a bug to me. I created a list called "lowcarb-news". I gave it custom subscribe and unsubscribe messages. I sent a subscribe request to the list. I got my custom subscribe message but the TO, FROM, and SUBJECT lines were all blank which makes it look very unprofessional. When I sent the unsubscribe request the same thing happened - I got my custom unsubscribe text but the TO, FROM, and SUBJECT lines were all blank.

Any ideas?

Lisa

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

Another note, in the Enterprise online documentation for global filters it says:

MailEnable’s Global Message Filters are configured under the Servers|localhost|Filters|MailEnable Message Filter section of the administration program.

There's no localhost - filters, there is a localhost - extensions and then mailenable message filter - but then I can't find the window indicated that lets you turn them on or off.

I did find if I right clicked on my actual post office that I could in essence recreate my filter there, for that one post office.

Lisa

MailEnable-Ben
Posts: 5858
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2004 6:49 am
Location: Melbourne

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by MailEnable-Ben »

bellaonline wrote:Another note, in the Enterprise online documentation for global filters it says:

MailEnable’s Global Message Filters are configured under the Servers|localhost|Filters|MailEnable Message Filter section of the administration program.
Thanks this has been noted and will be fixed in the near future.
bellaonline wrote:First a bug to report - On the "header" tab for lists, the documentation below the entry box talks about "footers" twice. It should be talking about "headers" on the header tab.
Thanks this has been fixed and will be correct in the next minor release of MailEnable.
bellaonline wrote:Second, which also seems like a bug to me. I created a list called "lowcarb-news". I gave it custom subscribe and unsubscribe messages. I sent a subscribe request to the list. I got my custom subscribe message but the TO, FROM, and SUBJECT lines were all blank which makes it look very unprofessional. When I sent the unsubscribe request the same thing happened - I got my custom unsubscribe text but the TO, FROM, and SUBJECT lines were all blank.
I do not see this issue my responses all have the message headers displaying correctly. Can you show us the MAI message file that you get back that does not display correctly.

The MailEnable list feature is a fairly basic feature in our product and not something we spend a great deal of time advancing presently. It sounds like you maybe better off using another product for this list management that allows for better management of bounces and the like. There are companies that devote 100% of their time in this area, I don’t think this is something we are looking at adding in the near future. Although I really do see the advantages of this type of bounce management processing.

Bounces to email addresses in our lists do not affect the list itself. There are some MailEnable customers who have the sender address be a mailbox on the system and then use the bounces that come back to manage their list, some have even created scripts that manage the list members from these bounces messages.
Regards,

Product Services
MailEnable Pty Ltd

To keep track of all ME company updates and version releases you should subscribe to the MailEnable list at http://www.mailenable.com or the RSS feed http://www.mailenable.com/rss.

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

I did get the sense that the list processing wasn't very robust and I went back to just figuring out how to get the regular bouncebacks to be processed.

While I'm mentioning typos, in your Enterprise documentation for message filtering - creating a global filter - standard filter criteria, you have many duplicate sections in there. You have the "To" header line in there twice, the CC header line in there twice, and so on. In the "To" area you talk about email addresses being separated by a "semi column" - that should be semi colon.

But really my issue is that I was able to get a script to work by looking for the word in the subject line of

lisawisa

that worked fine. It caught the message and ran my script, which launched a browser window and did the required database processing. But as soon as I change that to instead look for a *phrase* in the body - I'm looking for

"SMTP diagnostic: 550"

it stops catching messages. It lets them right through. Can you not look for a "phrase" in a filter?

Lisa

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

An update - I created a customized script instead of using the regular system, and my script seems to catch the phrase properly.

so what I am doing now is:

* set up a mail server level filter that runs a script.

* the script looks for a phrase in the body to indicate this is a hard bounceback.

* it moves the mail to quarantine, runs a vbs script, then deletes the original message.

* the vbs script first logs that it begins

* it then opens the mail file for processing, and goes line by line through it looking for an email address.

* when it finds it, it strips out any surrounding brackets or such

* It then uses a shell to launch a browser window, calling a page on my main server.

* that asp page takes in the email address as a variable and runs various database operations with it

* when the asp script processing ends, that browser window is still open. You can't tell a browser window to "close itself" (for security reasons)

* so the vbs script waits a little while, then sends an alt F and X to close the browser window

* the vbs script logs that it ends

Yes, it's kludgy, but it's the first time I've gotten anything at all to work the way I want it to.

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

Another update - I was finally able to get the database connection working between the servers so my script is slightly modified now. So now the sequence is:

* filter on bellaonline.com area runs a script to look for phrases in the mail message bodies

* those messages are moved to quarantine, a vbs script is run on them, and the original message is deleted.

* the vbs script parses the mail file to look for the email address, and then runs database operations with that email address. It still does the logging as well.

So that's a little more clean.

I'm having an odd problem now that I have about 2,000 messages stuck in my out queue that seem to all be bouncebacks of various kinds (although not ones relating to the five specific strings I'm currently checking on). They should be going to various internal addresses like my low carb site at bellaonline.com. However they're all sitting in the queue. I tried restarting the SMTP service but they're not moving. They shouldn't be affected at all by my filter. Any thoughts as to why they are stalled in the queue? Other mail is going through past them, so I'm not sure if they got stuck because they were going through during my testing periods last night and now there's something special about those messages compared with the other ones.

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

Here is the script I am running, that is attached to my bellaonline.com post office.

FilterResult=0

If CriteriaMet([ME_BODY],"SMTP diagnostic: 550") OR _
CriteriaMet([ME_BODY],"Unknown address error 550") OR _
CriteriaMet([ME_BODY],"Remote host said: 550 User unknown") OR _
CriteriaMet([ME_BODY],"550 Unrouteable address") OR _
CriteriaMet([ME_BODY],"Delivery to the following recipients failed") Then
FilterResult=1
End If

Is there any reason this filter should cause mail messages to "stick" in the queue? I'm looking at the SF logs and it is actively processing things, moving them off to various mailboxes. So it's not "stopped" completely. It's not showing errors.

Looking at my SMTP log I do have large series of Quit messages like this:

2010-10-01 13:51:39 209.191.88.254 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:39 67.195.168.230 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:39 98.137.54.237 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 98.137.54.238 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 66.94.236.34 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 74.6.140.64 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 66.94.237.64 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 98.139.54.60 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 67.195.168.31 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150
2010-10-01 13:51:40 74.6.136.65 SMTP-OU 4140 CONN QUIT - AVL1087 0 150

I'll turn on more debugging to try to figure out what is going on there.

bellaonline
Posts: 107
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2006 7:15 am

Re: Using MailEnable to Manage Newsletters

Post by bellaonline »

Just to update in case anyone else hits this problem. I had to UNbind 127.0.0.1 from my smtp inbound and the queue instantly released and worked properly again. I've had that setting in there for years, I have to guess, and haven't touched it in forever. So I'm not sure why it chose tonight to suddenly cause problems, but once I unbound it things were OK again.

Now that the queue is empty again, I'll reactivate my filter and see how it goes.

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