Send HTML newsletter automatically using command line mail

send HTML newsletter automatically using command line mail

				send HTML newsletter automatically using command line mail

One of the keys to success in business and important feature of many different online businesses is keeping in touch with customers. One way of doing this is by sending newsletters to customers at regular intervals, e.g. on a monthly basis to inform customers of new products and services.

Newsletters can be sent in many formats. A professional newsletter is usually created in html format as a webpage embedded in an email. These newsletters incorporate a mixture of text and graphics and links to product pages. It is a good idea to link images into the html file rather than embed them directly, so that they are downloaded from a web server when the user reads the email. This provides three distinct advantages:

It prevents user frustration of having to wait for a large email to download and their inbox being filled with large emails.

It allows images to be changed or customized for the user on the server if necessary.

It prevents unnecessary use of bandwidth to send the email. This will allow the batch email to be sent much faster using the outgoing mail server.

Using febooti Command line mail tool allows a simple yet powerful approach to send an email batch.

Solution:

@echo off

rem Note that customers.txt file
rem should be separated with semicolon.

rem Sending email...
febootimail -SERVER outgoing.mail.server.com -FROM ""Online Shop Automated Newsletter" <newsletter@onlineshop.com>" -TO customers@onlineshop.com -BCC -USEFILE customers.txt -REPLYTO bounceback@onlineshop.com -CHARSET ISO-8859-1 -SUBJECT Online Shop November Newsletter -HTMLFILE C:\september-newsletter.html -MSG This email has been sent using Command line mail in HTML format. Copyright © 2006 Online Shop -WAITBEFORE 2

The following points explain what the command does when it is called:

1: The -SERVER parameter is used to specify the outgoing mail server. This can be in standard URL form or an IP address.

2: The -FROM parameter uses a friendly name as well as an actual email address to make the email look more professional.

3: -TO parameter specifies email address which will be seen by all recipients including -CC and -BCC recipients. -BCC parameter used in conjunction with -USEFILE argument allows SMTP command line mailer to auto send email to multiple recipients individually. Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) recipients do not see each other and are not seen by TO and Carbon Copy (CC) recipients. In this case, the command takes recipients from a specified text file which should contain a list of recipients separated by semicolon. The -USEFILE argument can also be used with all other febooti DOS mail tool commands.

4: -REPLYTO specifies a reply address that the user's email client will use if the user attempts to reply to the email. In this example a dummy email address has been used as people do not normally reply to newsletters.

5: The -CHARSET argument specifies the character set the customer's email client must use to decode the email successfully. This is necessary for clients who use languages other than English, especially Eastern Asian countries and those languages that use a right to left writing convention.

6: -SUBJECT defines the subject of the email so the customer is immediately informed of the contents of the email.

7: The -HTMLFILE argument is used to specify the filename of an html file for the command to use. This is especially useful as html files can be professionally created and then emailed to customers using febooti Command line mail.

8: Although -HTMLFILE allows the use of a predefined html file, -MSG can also be used to add a message in plain text format. This is useful to inform a customer that html formatting is used if the customer's mail client is not able to render html files correctly.

9: The -WAITBEFORE argument specifies that the command should wait 2 seconds before executing. Use of this parameter prevents the outgoing mail server from becoming overloaded with requests for sending many emails. This value can be changed depending on the size of the email and the available connection speed.

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