I send you a newsletter to 654 addresses. I used to have Filemaker 8
hand the mails over to Eudora on OS 10.4. Problem came up on the new
machine with snow leopard, so I tried the new "send mail via smtp"
feature.

I set the send mail script step to "several E-Mails (one E-Mail per
record)" (or whatever that is in English) and got a tremendous amount of
error messages - it turned out that the SMTP had pulled the plug after
the first 100 mails (spam prevention, it's my ISP's SMTP).

Trouble is it was hard to say which mails had been sent. So I turned
error capture on and looped through the records:

Send Mail (this record only)
If ( East Error ) = 0
   set field ( MailSentAt ; Get ( CurrentTimeStamp )
 Else
   set field ( MailingError ; "Error No " & Get ( Last Error )
End If
Commit record
Go to next record

which leaves me with 100 Records showing the timestamp of the
successfull mailing and all the other records displaying error code
1506.

Are there better ways to do this? The script can't catch the SMTPs error
message itself, can it?
-- 
http://clk.ch

On Feb 6, 9:26=A0am, c...@tele2.ch (Christoph Kaufmann) wrote:
> I send you a newsletter to 654 addresses. I used to have Filemaker 8
> hand the mails over to Eudora on OS 10.4. Problem came up on the new
> machine with snow leopard, so I tried the new "send mail via smtp"
> feature.
>
> I set the send mail script step to "several E-Mails (one E-Mail per
> record)" (or whatever that is in English) and got a tremendous amount of
> error messages - it turned out that the SMTP had pulled the plug after
> the first 100 mails (spam prevention, it's my ISP's SMTP).
>

>
> which leaves me with 100 Records showing the timestamp of the
> successfull mailing and all the other records displaying error code
> 1506.
>
> Are there better ways to do this? The script can't catch the SMTPs error
> message itself, can it?
> --http://clk.ch

A better way is to use a 3rd party mailing service like Constant
Contact or MailChimp.

There are several reasons for this...

-Clearly your ISP is preventing you from sending out enough mail.
-If you're in the US, probably some other countries, though I don't
know about China, you open yourself up to being subject to anti-spam
laws if you're not careful.

Good luck

In article <1jdi42j.ngu6ox1wqjteyN%clk@tele2.ch>, clk@tele2.ch (Christoph
Kaufmann) wrote:

> I send you a newsletter to 654 addresses. I used to have Filemaker 8
> hand the mails over to Eudora on OS 10.4. Problem came up on the new
> machine with snow leopard, so I tried the new "send mail via smtp"
> feature.
> 
> I set the send mail script step to "several E-Mails (one E-Mail per
> record)" (or whatever that is in English) and got a tremendous amount of
> error messages - it turned out that the SMTP had pulled the plug after
> the first 100 mails (spam prevention, it's my ISP's SMTP).
> 
> Trouble is it was hard to say which mails had been sent. So I turned
> error capture on and looped through the records:
> 
> Send Mail (this record only)
> If ( East Error ) = 0
>    set field ( MailSentAt ; Get ( CurrentTimeStamp )
>  Else
>    set field ( MailingError ; "Error No " & Get ( Last Error )
> End If
> Commit record
> Go to next record
> 
> which leaves me with 100 Records showing the timestamp of the
> successfull mailing and all the other records displaying error code
> 1506.
> 
> Are there better ways to do this? The script can't catch the SMTPs error
> message itself, can it?


That pretty much looks like you've worked out the best answer.

With that number of addresses you might be better using a company that
specialises in email newsletters - there are quite a few around these
days, but you'll have to pay for the service. 

If you can cut the number of addresses down to 500, then MailChimp.com
will let you send six emails per month to those addresses for free.

If you are a non-profit organisation (may need to be officially
registered), then SimplyCast.com will let you send up to 20,000 emails for
free.


Helpful Harry  :o)

On 7 Feb, 22:54, Grip <g...@cybermesa.com> wrote:
> On Feb 6, 9:26=A0am, c...@tele2.ch (Christoph Kaufmann) wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > I send you a newsletter to 654 addresses. I used to have Filemaker 8
> > hand the mails over to Eudora on OS 10.4. Problem came up on the new
> > machine with snow leopard, so I tried the new "send mail via smtp"
> > feature.
>
> > I set the send mail script step to "several E-Mails (one E-Mail per
> > record)" (or whatever that is in English) and got a tremendous amount o=
f
> > error messages - it turned out that the SMTP had pulled the plug after
> > the first 100 mails (spam prevention, it's my ISP's SMTP).
>
> > which leaves me with 100 Records showing the timestamp of the
> > successfull mailing and all the other records displaying error code
> > 1506.
>
> > Are there better ways to do this? The script can't catch the SMTPs erro=
r
> > message itself, can it?
> > --http://clk.ch
>
> A better way is to use a 3rd party mailing service like Constant
> Contact or MailChimp.
>
> There are several reasons for this...
>
> -Clearly your ISP is preventing you from sending out enough mail.
> -If you're in the US, probably some other countries, though I don't
> know about China, you open yourself up to being subject to anti-spam
> laws if you're not careful.
>
> Good luck

Hi

If you wish to stick to the FileMaker SMTP tools, you can loop through
all the records building an address string:

$AddressString=3D$AddressString & ";" & email

When you reach 99 you can generate one email to the string of
addresses. I've tried it and it work. You then carry on to build your
next group of 99.

The alternative, using an application like Mailchimp has the advantage
of being able to track errors e.g. bouncebacks and they also have
tools to handle unsubscribing. On the matter of domains, I've just
learnt, "CH" is Switzerland, China is "CA".

Regards Kevin Smith

Grip <grip@cybermesa.com> wrote:

> -Clearly your ISP is preventing you from sending out enough mail.

They just slow me down, it's a simple spam prevention thing.

> -If you're in the US, probably some other countries, though I don't
> know about China, you open yourself up to being subject to anti-spam
> laws if you're not careful.

In China (.cn), you need to know somebody in court and you're fine :-)

Spamming is a crime here in Switzerland (.ch).

-- 
http://clk.ch