Need Advice / Help with Email and Work

[C. Matthew McMahon]

I have a task in the next couple of weeks to come up with "everything I need to know" about how email servers work and what we would need or have to do to become an "email server" at work so we can send out lots of emails for educational purposes.

We have already checked the spam laws and are exempt with political, religious or educational information. We are working on getting an .edu site so we can send the emails out from an educational site, but we already do educational documentaries and are not looking for any profit at all from the email campagins for a given topic. For example, we will create a 6 minute documentary on brain surgery, host it on Google and YouTube, and then send out 10,000 emails to all the top brain surgeons on this new technique out there. Its like a trade journal article come to life.

But I need to know the more technical specs.

I will be talking with Rich in the next couple of weeks, but I just want to cover my bases in amassing any information I might need to in order to make this as easy as possible.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Matt,

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626151
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626192
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626164
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626124
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626101
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626062
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625932
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625868

I think you should read the above and, when ready, contact a company like this: http://bronto.com/

I wouldn't go through the trouble of setting up my own server and worrying about navigating all the SBL's and SURBL's that might block your campaign. Learn from above how you want to craft it and then go with a pro that is keeping his IP's and URL's from being banned.

If you're not careful on this then what can happen is that your normal URL could trigger a Spam. That is to say, that many use SURBL filtering on their EXIM gateway (the server that processes inbound messaging). I use it on my server in fact. What it does is that it checks a list of URL's that are known Spam sources and if it finds the URL in the message it bounces the message from being delivered.

What could happen, if you weren't careful, is that people could identify you as a Spam source and your URL could end up on the SURBL sil. This would cause problems not just for your e-mail campaigns but for normal e-mail itself.

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

Rich,

I understand your warning, but we want to become the professionals in that industry. In other words, instead of outsourcing it - which is too expensive - we need to be able to duplicate that with an IT guy here in house. We need to figure out how to do that on our own in order to make it cost effective. We talked with some who wanted .20 cents an email. That's ludicrous. It costs them server time, engery and space to send out thousands of them for free. We need to be able to do that on our own.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Roger Matt. I now understand what you're trying to do.

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

Rich,

We are not going to become the "competitor" to someone in "that" industry. Rather, we want to "tweak" our industry.

 

[bookslover]

...we will create a 6 minute documentary on brain surgery, host it on Google and YouTube, and then send out 10,000 emails to all the top brain surgeons on this new technique out there. Its like a trade journal article come to life.

Wait a minute: you're a magician and a brain surgeon, too? Dude, you are one talented guy!