Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 09:38:05PM +0530, Phoenix Kiula wrote:
> Hi. I need to send annoucements to a large opt-in list.
> 
> Having never done this before [...]

Since you've never done this before, and you mention that the list
has 400K users, I urge extreme caution.  Unless you/your operation
have explicitly requested and explicitly received permission from
all 400K users to send them bulk email, then you should not do so.
Note that permission is NOT transferable: a user who has given permission
to A to receive bulk email from A has not given that same permission to B.
Permission cannot be bought, sold, traded, presumed or inferred: and
the sending of bulk email without permission is called "spamming".

For further explanation, please see:

http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=Marketing%20FAQs

---Rsk
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Ed's Shop]

On Saturday, April 18, 2009 1:16 PM, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:

On Apr 17, 2009, at 11:45 PM, Phoenix Kiula wrote:

> I went into the mailman in cpanel [...]

As others have pointed out, 400K addresses with full personalization
is a big job that may well require some MTA tuning.  And a hosting
service using cpanel is unlikely to be one that provides you with what
you need. And it is also likely that some of the mailman tuning you
need to do won't be available through cpanel.

The absolute first (well actually, second) thing you should do is talk
to your hosting provider to see what they say about you sending to a
list of 400K address with personalization.  Only after they say that
they are okay with that, should you be asking about the mechanics of
actually doing this.

And of course, the first thing that you need to do is make sure that
you have evidence that each and every email address on that list is
read by someone who how wants to be on that list.  That is, do you
have a positive response to a confirmation request that was sent to
each address?

Many of your earlier questions about proper SPF records and so on will
depend on how your provider has set up mailman under cpanel.

-j

--
Jeffrey Goldberghttp://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
--
<>

I would wager that 'if' Phoenix opted to upgrade their "hosting service"
to a Dedicated Service, they would be happy to do so given a LEGIT
Mailing List (as mentioned above).  Mine would. -:)

Of course there IS quite a jump in the Annual Dollar Amount.  LOL

Ed


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

On Apr 17, 2009, at 11:45 PM, Phoenix Kiula wrote:


I went into the mailman in cpanel [...]


As others have pointed out, 400K addresses with full personalization  
is a big job that may well require some MTA tuning.  And a hosting  
service using cpanel is unlikely to be one that provides you with what  
you need. And it is also likely that some of the mailman tuning you  
need to do won't be available through cpanel.


The absolute first (well actually, second) thing you should do is talk  
to your hosting provider to see what they say about you sending to a  
list of 400K address with personalization.  Only after they say that  
they are okay with that, should you be asking about the mechanics of  
actually doing this.


And of course, the first thing that you need to do is make sure that  
you have evidence that each and every email address on that list is  
read by someone who how wants to be on that list.  That is, do you  
have a positive response to a confirmation request that was sent to  
each address?


Many of your earlier questions about proper SPF records and so on will  
depend on how your provider has set up mailman under cpanel.


-j


--
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Mark Sapiro]

Phoenix Kiula wrote:
>>
>> Yes. It's called "Full Personalization"
>
>
>How can I enable it?
>
>I went into the mailman in cpanel and did not find this setting in the
>"Non Digest" section.


If the setting isn't in the Non Digest section, the installation has
not allowed list owners to enable personalization. The installation
must allow this by putting

OWNERS_CAN_ENABLE_PERSONALIZATION = Yes

in mm_cfg.py.

See the things Brad referred you to for more information.

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San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Brad Knowles]

on 4/17/09 11:45 PM, Phoenix Kiula said:


Yes. It's called "Full Personalization"


How can I enable it?

I went into the mailman in cpanel and did not find this setting in the
"Non Digest" section.

Then I read the faq - http://www.list.org/faq.html - and there's no
information on "full personalization".


The FAQ has been moved.  We need to clean up those old links.  The new 
location for the FAQ is 
.  If you 
use the search function for "personalization", you should have the 
answer as it applies to the standard version of Mailman as we provide 
from .


However, note that cPanel has made some changes to the code they ship. 
See FAQ 6.11 at  for more information.



If cpanel uses an old version of mailman, or if it blocks the "full
personalization" feature, how can I manually enable it in the config
file or somethng?


That's really a question you need to be asking your service provider. 
They're the ones who installed cPanel, and they should have those 
answers for you.



I will tell you this -- I don't think you're going to handle anywhere 
remotely close to the number of users you're talking about with a cPanel 
installation.  If you want to get those levels of performance, you're 
going to need a more customized installation and you're going to need to 
have full privileged access to the server and the MTA, as well as full 
site admin access.


Either that, or a service provider who is willing and able to do all 
these things for you -- and anyone running cPanel is highly unlikely to 
fit into that picture.


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Phoenix Kiula]

Thanks Mark.

>>> (1) Is it possible for mailman to send emails where the "to:" header
>>> has the email of a specific recipient? It's more personal than sending
>>> to a common email address.
>
>
> Yes. It's called "Full Personalization"


How can I enable it?

I went into the mailman in cpanel and did not find this setting in the
"Non Digest" section.

Then I read the faq - http://www.list.org/faq.html - and there's no
information on "full personalization".

If cpanel uses an old version of mailman, or if it blocks the "full
personalization" feature, how can I manually enable it in the config
file or somethng?

Thanks.
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Mark Sapiro]

Phoenix Kiula wrote:

>Sorry,also one more question:
>
>(4)  What is a good way to add about 400,000 users? Can I save these
>in a huge text file and then use the upload function in the mailman
>web interface? I wonder if this will crash my server. (I could do it
>in batches of 100,000 or so).


bin/add_members would be better. The web interface would probably time
out.

More answers below.


>
>On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Phoenix Kiula  wrote:
>> Hi. I need to send annoucements to a large opt-in list.


I hope it's really opt-in.


>> Having never done this before and not being now confident if PHP's
>> mail() can manage it, I was pointed to mailman.
>>
>> My questions:
>>
>> (1) Is it possible for mailman to send emails where the "to:" header
>> has the email of a specific recipient? It's more personal than sending
>> to a common email address.


Yes. It's called "Full Personalization"


>> (2) Secondly, on a 2GB memory server with fast SATA hard disks, is
>> sending email to 400,000 users possible with mailman? Will it
>> automatically take care of delays etc between batches of sending?


I don't know what you mean by delays between batches. If you enable
Full Personalization, each recipient is sent a separate message so you
will have 400,000 MTA transactions with 1 recipient each.

If you need some kind of throttling between Mailman and the MTA,
Mailman doesn't do that.


>> (3) How can I make sure that the emails sent honor my DNZ zone records
>> and pick up my SPF settings, and my Domain Keys? Or is that something
>> the receiver's email client does as long as these are validly
>> published on my domain?


This has nothing to do with Mailman. The MTA mailman delivers to
determines the IP address that the mail comes from. Your SPF records
need to list that IP as one that's allowable for your domain. Also
it's the MTA that adds any DKIM/Domain-Keys headers.

If your MTA and DNS is currently properly configured in this respect,
then it isn't any different when Mailman is originating the mail.

-- 
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San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Brad Knowles]

on 4/11/09 11:08 AM, Phoenix Kiula said:


Hi. I need to send annoucements to a large opt-in list.

Having never done this before and not being now confident if PHP's
mail() can manage it, I was pointed to mailman.

My questions:


For all your questions, I would encourage you to first visit our FAQ at 
.  There is a decent search function, and 
the FAQ is broken down by various sections.



(1) Is it possible for mailman to send emails where the "to:" header
has the email of a specific recipient? It's more personal than sending
to a common email address.


Mailman has some personalization options, yes.  For more details, see 
the FAQ.



(2) Secondly, on a 2GB memory server with fast SATA hard disks, is
sending email to 400,000 users possible with mailman? Will it
automatically take care of delays etc between batches of sending?


There are too many factors involved to be able to say for sure.  Try 
searching the FAQ for "performance".


I will say that what you're talking about is not out of the realm of 
possibility, and might even be reasonably easy to do, with the right MTA 
with the right configuration, etc  But there are far too many other 
variables to be able to give a blanket statement based on such few facts.



That said, coming on this list and asking for advice on how to send to a 
claimed opt-in list of 400k users might be considered by some people to 
be a bit suspicious.  We've had some not-so-bright spammers come on here 
before to try to get us to help them send out their effluent faster, and 
I think we have successfully discouraged the less intelligent ones away.


I would encourage you to be really, really sure that the list in 
question is truly 100% confirmed double opt-in, and not just some 
spammer list that is being imported from some other provider because 
they got kicked off.  There are responsible e-mail marketing resources I 
can point you to that can help you with these kinds of tasks, if you're 
interested.


I don't mean to offend, but you should understand that it can be 
difficult to tell the difference between a spammer who is pretending to 
be a white hat, and a real white hat who just has a large-ish job to do.



(3) How can I make sure that the emails sent honor my DNZ zone records
and pick up my SPF settings, and my Domain Keys? Or is that something
the receiver's email client does as long as these are validly
published on my domain?


All of those things are external to Mailman.  It would be up to your MTA 
to make sure that all outbound mail conforms to the appropriate 
standards, and up to the recipient MTAs to ensure that they perform the 
appropriate functions relative to those standards.


I can tell you right now that not all of those recipient servers will 
act appropriately.  You're going to have to decide how you're going to 
handle that.


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Phoenix Kiula]

Sorry,also one more question:

(4)  What is a good way to add about 400,000 users? Can I save these
in a huge text file and then use the upload function in the mailman
web interface? I wonder if this will crash my server. (I could do it
in batches of 100,000 or so).

Thanks!



On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Phoenix Kiula  wrote:
> Hi. I need to send annoucements to a large opt-in list.
>
> Having never done this before and not being now confident if PHP's
> mail() can manage it, I was pointed to mailman.
>
> My questions:
>
> (1) Is it possible for mailman to send emails where the "to:" header
> has the email of a specific recipient? It's more personal than sending
> to a common email address.
>
> (2) Secondly, on a 2GB memory server with fast SATA hard disks, is
> sending email to 400,000 users possible with mailman? Will it
> automatically take care of delays etc between batches of sending?
>
> (3) How can I make sure that the emails sent honor my DNZ zone records
> and pick up my SPF settings, and my Domain Keys? Or is that something
> the receiver's email client does as long as these are validly
> published on my domain?
>
> Thanks for any thoughts! Hope my questions are not too newbie.
>
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[Mailman-Users] Sending bulk mail (400,000 users)

[Phoenix Kiula]

Hi. I need to send annoucements to a large opt-in list.

Having never done this before and not being now confident if PHP's
mail() can manage it, I was pointed to mailman.

My questions:

(1) Is it possible for mailman to send emails where the "to:" header
has the email of a specific recipient? It's more personal than sending
to a common email address.

(2) Secondly, on a 2GB memory server with fast SATA hard disks, is
sending email to 400,000 users possible with mailman? Will it
automatically take care of delays etc between batches of sending?

(3) How can I make sure that the emails sent honor my DNZ zone records
and pick up my SPF settings, and my Domain Keys? Or is that something
the receiver's email client does as long as these are validly
published on my domain?

Thanks for any thoughts! Hope my questions are not too newbie.
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