[OPLINTECH] Advice on sending thousands of emails?

[Phil Shirley]

We want to send email to all of the roughly 16,000 patron email address 
we have, regarding our upcoming levy election. Below is how I'm thinking 
of doing it; any suggestions or comments?

I've got a file of addresses that look valid 
(something at something.something, with only text, numerals, periods, 
hyphens, underscores, plus signs, and one @ - I know there are other 
valid characters but our addresses didn't have anything else).

Actually I have 16 files, with no more than 1,000 addresses each, so I 
can do a batch of 1,000 and then give the mail server some time to catch 
up if needed.

I'm planning to create a script on our Linux mail server that takes 
addresses from one of these files and does something like

for each $address
    mail -s "this is the subject" $address < message.txt

I would create a special user account for this and run the script as 
that user, and then I would check that user's mail for bounces and replies.

Any comments or suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Phil
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Phil Shirley
Technology Services Coordinator
Cuyahoga Falls Library
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
330-928-2117, ext. 109
pshirley at CuyahogaFallsLibrary dot org

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