On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 1:30 PM, James Wilkinson <fedora@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I would like to send several e-mails from a GMail account and with the > > same content but with a different opening for each recipient. Is it > > possible to accomplish it with Fedora? > > How big a database? > > Thing is, this sounds like bulk emailing: if it’s large enough that you > want to automate this, it’s large enough to be considered bulk. That > immediately raises two questions: > > * Have all your recipients *actively* requested this email? > > * is what you’re doing likely to get the attention of ISPs, and Google > in particular? > > The large free email service providers (Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and Google) > have an ongoing problem with spammers using their services¹, and are > taking a number of technical means to spot and stop this. You don’t want > to fall foul of this, or you may find Google closing your account > permanently. A database-fed burst of similar but slightly-different > email is the sort of thing that they would look for. > > There’s a lot of potential for things to go wrong here, and you probably > won’t get any support from Google. > > You might want to consider http://mailchimp.com/pricing/free/ : they do > know what they’re doing, and they have a pretty good reputation. (I’m > not connected with MailChimp, although I did recommend it to my company > before we decided to keep bulk-mailing in-house.) > > Hope this helps, > > James. > > > ¹ Especially the so-called Nigerian 419 spammers, who will pay > third-world citizens to write and send emails through free email > services: the constantly-differing texts make it harder to do content > analysis spotting that these emails are spam. Thanks for all answers and suggestions. I have meanwhile found the following script, which works with the Google Docs Spreadsheet: http://www.google.pt/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=yet%20another%20mail%20merge&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVxUgXeswDLI&ei=Ju9ET9C3Nc-78gOs1sHZBA&usg=AFQjCNHHAo1r8hLIvlblWUYCzh-n_cyNAg&cad=rja My database has 500 recipients, and is not spam. Paul -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
