Mountain View 1600, CA 94043
+1 650-253-0000
name@example.com
Web
Site
Search
Register
Login
DNN Home
Services
-
DotNetNuke Support
-
CRM Systems
DNN
-
DotNetNuke Modules
-
Module Downloads
-
Module Upgrade Policy
DNN Support
-
Module Update News
-
Knowledge Base
-
License Management
-
Invoice History
Module Downloads
Blog
Store
Contact Us
-
About Us
Search
Home
1
2
3
4
5
Home
Support
Bulk Emailer
Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
Previous
Next
7/26/2009 7:08 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
I am confident it is working, I already have two unsubscribes, which is my "proof"!
But I am wondering how long it will take.
I have 19,365 members.
Scheduler is set to 2 minutes, retry at 10 minutes.
It sends in batches of 50.
Will it take: 19365/50 = 387 batches
387 x 2 minutes = 774 minutes = 12.9 hours, THEN go through the resends?
Do the resends fit into slots along the way?
As my list goes back to October 2006, I expect a lot will bounce ... so I am wondering if this will end up taking 3 days
If I log on and go into where I can see the progress, the green bar is currently showing at 2% (after 8 hours), so it might take another 48x8 hours (16 days!)
:)
7/26/2009 7:42 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
8.5 hours in and it's now up to 7% ... oh the suspense is killing me :)
Overall the programme looks brilliant. It has more functionality than I expected.
I'm excited, yet scared ... anticipating ... yet holding my breath.
This is my first mailing. The list has been growing daily since late 2006 and it's always been the elephant in the room that I don't speak about ... mailing these people has always been on my To Do list .. and here I am doing it.
8.5 hours at 7% would indicate maybe it will "only" take 5 days to complete :)
I'm sure *fingers crossed* that it will speed up ... it's just the waiting is killing me :)
oooh it all looks sooo good ... and promising. *fingers crossed* ... it will be OK won't it, this is working and will keep going.... just like magic.
I love the interface and am really looking forward to the dead wood unsubscribing, so I end up with a clean and keen list :)
7/26/2009 8:13 PM
DNN Module Support
Joined: 8/28/2006
Posts: 2065
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(Australia)
That actually sounds slow. It is sending 5o messages per round, and set by default to 2 min. You can speed up by changing the scheduler process to 1 min for example.
It will not break, no matter how many people you send to, as the process is database driven, and not process or memorydependant, but out of interest, what it is reporting as the number to send?
7/26/2009 8:25 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
Although I had been in the scheduler, I am not a techie, so just went to look. I didn't want to touch anything in case it broke. I have the attitude of "don't touch it ... and you can always change that next time"
I don't know where to look for "number to send", my figure of 19,365 comes from knowing the numbner of opt in members I have in the list.
9 hours in, it is now up to 8%.
First thing I did this morning was nervously load the website to see if it still existed (it did) ... and logged on .. just don't want to do anything that might compromise the process.
7/26/2009 8:34 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
OK, I got brave. In Campaign Manager I clicked the view icon.
At the bottom of the list of emails it says:
Total 18122 records, Page 1 of 182
Looking down that list of emails, the status on all of them on the first page says "not sent"
Clicking on View Statistics tab it says: Messages sent: 1420
SO it looks like it has taken 9.5 hours to send 1420. This is 150/hour.
This section also tells me there are 0 bounces. My list will be low quality so I'd expect a high rate of bounces as people might have signed up with disposable email addresses and some of them have been on there months/years. So maybe there's a huge queue of resends queueing?
7/26/2009 9:02 PM
DNN Module Support
Joined: 8/28/2006
Posts: 2065
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(Australia)
Sounds slow... use the contact us form (on this site) to send us some host details to have a look at why this may be.
7/26/2009 9:26 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
I'll do that, although not sure which host details you'll want, I'll include what I can.
I have just "fiddled" ... against my Rule 1 which is always "don't fiddle, let it run so at least you can prove it did work before you fiddled" - I changed the bounce from 3 to 1, so at least now it won't queue/retry so many times.
7/27/2009 5:14 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
After 24 hours, when it had still only sent about 3000 I contacted my host to see if there was a cap.
The initial call was referred to the helpdesk.
I then went to sleep, woke up this morning and checked - it was 100% complete, so went through to statistics and it had sent just 3150. Thousands were marked as "failed". I suspect my host terminated my emails sending when they looked at how long it would take.
So I read the helpdesk ticket on my host and they had put "Dear client, it is slow to send mail like that. I suggest you send your mail via our mailing list in the control panel>>Mail>>mail list manager. It allows you to send bulk mail and will send your mail quickly. Please give a check. "
But I don't want to use their mailing list, I want to use this software. I want to use this software because it's easy to use (I understand it) and it puts things like username into the email. So, stuck now.
Choices are:
- never email my members
- email them but expect it to take up to a week to arrive
- move hosts
- use the host's mailing list (paying extra for less functionality)
I am using webhost4life.com in case anybody is wondering.
7/27/2009 5:25 PM
DNN Module Support
Joined: 8/28/2006
Posts: 2065
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(Australia)
We had a look, and agree that you are getting capped for this reason. There are however a few options.
1. Use other SMTP servers. This might be servers like your internet ISP etc, so long as they allow relay transfer with authentication.
2. Update the version you are using... by chance, our latest release allows you to configure multiple SMTP servers, and set limits for servers. So in this case you could set a limt of say 3000 for this (crappy host) and then setup other SMTP servers to use. Gmail - 400 per day, Hotmail, 240 per day etc.. and your home ISP etc.
3. If you don't care how long it takes.. just slow down the send. I presume these guys have a limit per 24 hours. and at a guess, it is either 3000 or 1500 per day. depends if you hit a crossover time. So you could slow down the process to send say, 1 send per hour = 50 messages per hour = 1200 per day. It would take a number of days to send to 18,000 but it would go.
4. Option 4. We host, and don't limit email (that is not abused). So host with us and we can allow you to blast away!
7/27/2009 11:10 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
Hmm some options.
1) I could try this, but it's a whole black hole learning curve.
2) Sounds like a lot of hassle
3) I do care how long it takes. I had planned on sending 2 emails/week. I probably get 100-150 new members/week so the problem isn't going away. Especially as I've not promoted the site before and I plan to do so now. Being able to email people was part of that promotion plan.
4) I chose my current host because it was a "push one button" install. And they have Live Help so I can instantly get them to look at it when I have problems (which I don't usually). To move it would be outside of my capabilities. I couldn't find a page on your site telling me what hosting/how much you charge.
7/28/2009 11:10 AM
DNN Module Support
Joined: 8/28/2006
Posts: 2065
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(Australia)
It might be easier for us to offer a paid SMTP service. Sending 40,000 email messages per week is considerable on any host, however we would be happy to acomodate this for $100 USD per month.
This is around have the standard industry rate of people like:
http://www.benchmarkemail.com/ExtPricing
7/28/2009 7:21 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
That i s a fair rate. I need to email the list, in order to reduce its size. I'm sure a lot of it is dead wood, but once I start emailing regularly then theoretically the list would grow in time.
I'm at that stage when I have what is essentially a hobby site that's covering its costs ... and then making the decision to invest in it to enable it to grow or letting something just deteriorate and die (which would be a shame).
I didn't get good rates from my initial mailing, but I know the list is old/low quality. It was a first mail out of poor quality content to a cold audience... but I did only get 9 unsubscribes and I did get 195 read (out of 3000), although obviously read could just mean they have their preview pane showing emails by default. I did notice a 25% increase in website traffic on Monday, which matches with the CTR. I will admit to ot having set the landing page up though for tracking ... it was more an exercise in seeing if your software worked and making a first contact, rather than optimising and tracking and all the other details that are "best practice".
Specific Questions:
1) I presume the paid service you are offering would mean I would just have to change the smtp information in your software configuration - is that right?
2) If I were to start with just one mailing per week, first time would be 18,000, but there'd be boun ces/unsubscribes from that ... how much would you charge for that volume in the first instance. I need to build up my emailing practice to be able to produce 2 mailings per week probably .. don't want to rush at it and just send ouit filler rubbsih!
3) Your software did not report any bounces, which is obviously erroneous because I'd expect there to have probab ly been 400-500 out of the 3000 it did send. Why do you think this is?
Thanking you for your prompt attention to all my questions and issues. Your support is certainly 2nd to none. I want to buy your Bulk Emailer software (and SMTP service if I understand it right) because it simply just does the job exactly how I want/need/expect. I don't want to walk away and just leave this because my list size has reached a critical point and it won 't go away; this is an issue I have to resolve. Even though I don't believe using your service will make me as much as it is costing me, I do know it's not about money, it's about solutions and convenience. Once I have the solution in place I can work on my mailing techniques/copywriting skills etc to improve those areas. :)
7/28/2009 7:47 PM
DNN Module Support
Joined: 8/28/2006
Posts: 2065
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(Australia)
We should probalby talk about prices of specific volumes whne you are down around that rates... being that you are not even technically a client yet... lol
1. Correct - you only need use the latest version of our software, and we will configure an account on our smtp server.
2. Costings would be something we can talk about directly.
3. Bounces need to be configured in the bounce email settings according to the details in the manual. My guess is that you have either not done this, or PORT 110 is blocked by your host, and the applicaiton cannot access the bounce email account.
7/28/2009 9:50 PM
moreinfo
Joined: 7/5/2009
Posts: 16
Re: Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?
(United Kingdom)
1) Good, that is within my technical ability and understanding (always nice)
2) Yes, please do.
3) Er ... yeah... I admit it. I skimped. I was so keen to check out "does this work?" that I will admit I didn't read the manual from cover to cover. You caught me out there :)
Page 1 of 1
Previous
Next
Home
Support
Bulk Emailer
Calculating How Long It Takes / Is it working?