UE 4 - 11,600+ Live Mass mailing attempt
Greetings folks.
Yesterday morning I performed a mass mailing of 11,600+ messages using the new Universal Email v.4.0 release.
Background: For the last 2yrs I've used the Linecraft Studio Email Merge Server Object for PHP (Dreamweaver Extension). It has performed this task of sending 9000+ messages consistently on a monthly basis for a client newsletter with some effort and serious babysitting.
My overall satisfaction with the product has been moderate to satisfied. The issues that I have encountered have been frustrating and required great effort to overcome. However, after 24+ real time uses, I have confidence in the process.
Linecraft Studio Email Merge Issues
===========================
1. Babysitting the process for up to 3hrs has been a pain.
2. End users not being able to see HTML version in email client.
3. Failures and process lockups.
With the beta and release of UE4, I was successful in running small blasts of up to 10 addresses and all worked without a hitch. We all did the beta and all seemed to have been worked out before release.
Yesterday I started the process and found that the log file (created by the UE4 script) was working as expected initially. I started getting an error after the 1st few hundred entries. The EmailError (TEXT) field in MySQL filled up as it appears to append all responses collectively.
Current MySQL Mailing List - 11643 records
At the end of 4hrs of running the total record count in the email_log table was 18183 records... ( I bailed on the process before it ended ).
I did a check in MySQL to see what the log had to provide...
WHERE `EmailStatus` != 'Success'
and found that 158 "FAILED" (not unexpected)
However the 6540 record difference is alarming.
==============================
*** Addition that I'd like to see ***
==============================
1. How can I use dynamic data in my message template? Perhaps I want to use a user ID, name or email address in my message to personalize the emailing.
I thought about placing this in the UE 4 forum, but decided that I should initially provide this information here instead.
I hope this creates some useful dialog.
Tom