Have you validated the email addresses for sanity?
That is always my first step.
Run your list of emails through a good email regex to find all the bad addresses.
Find the obvious errors and fix them (aol.con for example is a fairly standard typo on the lists I've gotten)
Find the bad emails with spaces, and try replacing with "_" or removing the space (typical typo).
Find the obviously bogus addresses ([EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Fortunately, the really bad ones are fairly obvious and repeated.
Next, analyze your email. Is it triggering SPAM filters in your recipients systems? Which SPAM filters are kicking it? Craft a better email to avoid this.
Lastly, put a counter in the db next to the email. each time you send a batch, subtract one from the count. Each time you get a bounce, add 2 to the count.
You can adjust this weighting for 550 errors vs SPAM bounces vs OutOfOffice Autoresponders vs the Earthlink spamblocker based on why the message was returned.
Then set a cutoff range for messages that go out or not (rather than a boolean).
Each message sent without a known bounce makes the count a little healthier.
Each message that bounced makes the count worse.
Reset the counter if you KNOW a message got through (link click, tracking bug, etc.)
Reset the counter if they change their email address (or otherwise validate the address)
Just some thoughts,
Jerry Johnson
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/09/03 04:32PM >>>
In this case, we have a lot of volunteers collecting people's email
addresses and inputting them manually after events. There are a lot of
misspellings and bad communication, thus the need to determine what is
working and what is not. (To put this in perspective, the last mailing
that was sent had a 25% return rate).
This is the first time I've needed to think about problems like this,
really I am just trying to come up with the best way to handle it.
M
-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 4:22 PM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: Re: Checking for Returned Mail in CF
I do this with a windows-scheduled Java app that runs every 5
minutes.
The main piece of advice I can give is to be sure before you
disable someone.
There are a lot of reasons for getting a returned email. You
need to make sure that you know why an email was returned (the return
type gives you some hints, but you can't rely on them to be correct -
AOL is a notorious example of this) and therefore whether to disable
that address or not.
Jerry Johnson
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/09/03 04:09PM >>>
I need a good way to check for returned mail in CF. I have an
application that manages a mailing list, and we are getting a
massive
amount of returned email.
What I would like to do is have CF check the mail server for
returned
mail periodically and disable the accounts without valid email
addresses.
Does anyone do this already, or have any advice?
M
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