Newsletter with multiple categories

geecu

Sorry if this is old thread, but I've searched the archives and got no result.

I want to build a newsletter that would give the user the possibility to subscribe to certain categories (I'd have let's say 10 categories). Then, at midnight, I would run a script sending each user the information he/she requested.

Now - one way to do this would be to send each user separate e-mails for each category they subscribed. Another way: take each user, compile the newsletter (depending the categories he's chosen) and send the e-mail. And: another way: create a "category" for all the possible combinations, and include the user in one of them as soon as they subscribe. But in this case (I think there would be 1023 different combinations) wouldn't it be too slow to compile all the newsletters?

Hope you understand what I mean - if not: mail me.

Thank you,
GK

ame12

Depends upon a lot of factors... like how many subscribers you have, what kind of server(s) you're running on, etc. If you want to build this, it sounds do-able.

You may also want to check with a hosted newsletter service like iMakeNews.com (they are an ASP that specializes in newsletter publishing, may want to check w/them).

Dave

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geecu

It looks like the one I'm after costs 500$/month (at Imakenews) so... I'd better make it myself.

Sorry but I just didn't put my question in my previous post 🙂. I know that all the ways I've thought about are doable, but I was wondering which one is faster.

Thanks again,
GK

jjoske

I would generate each newsletter dynamically pulling the info out of a database depending on what catergories each user had selected. This means each user would only get one email and you would only have to store 10 different parts of the newsletter instead of only 1,000. You could get performance issues if you list was large, but this would probally be partially overcome by sending them out at a quiet time, and any large list is going to give you some performance issues.