Re: opt-in mail list best practice

Scott Haneda wrote: ... > I use it to create HTML emails, send them to 1000's of people. I think I > did a test to 30K or so, it handled it fine using mail locally. HTML emails [shudder] > As for tracking, what we do is embed a image bug in the html and track when > that loads, it is getting less reliable in todays anti spam world, but in my > case these are paying subscribers so they generally want to get these > emails. [shudder] The above paragraph is why I abhor HTML emails, and why I am glad that Mozilla lets me block all remote images (and click to view if I *really* want to see them). > > To track your users, at least the bounces we set the bounce address > (return-path) to mysql_user_id@domain.com and POP check domain.com every few > seconds. We then scan for the bounce address and mark that user as bouncing > x times, if they go over y we cancel the account. Now this is interesting... so you're telling me that all I have to do to get you to stop emailing me, is to bounce back all of your messages? Sure I'll have to forge a few headers to make it look like the mail server daemon didn't recognize my address... but THAT sounds like time well spent!!! OK, OK, I'm being a little harsh here. Because after all you're sending emails to customers that have at least opted-in (or so I hope). But there are so many shady ways of getting someone to opt-in, or making it hard to opt-out, or just plain harvesting emails and ignoring the wishes of the users. So yeah, sometimes when I hear about these things it just rubs me the wrong way. To anyone reading this: please use these techniques judiciously if you use them at all. -- Teach a man to fish... NEW? | http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html STFA | http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=php-general&w=2 STFM | http://php.net/manual/en/index.php STFW | http://www.google.com/search?q=php LAZY | http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html?name=PHP&submitform=Find+search+plugins

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