Automated email marketing?

[deshg]

Hey everyone,

I am building a website for a friend of mine that requires emails to be sent out in three cases:

1) An automated activation email after a user signs up
2) A automated notification email letting them know something relevant to them has happened (eg someone has commented on their profile)
3) A manual newsletter mail out that could be to all the users or just a subsection of them.

I am trying to work out the best way to implement this given my friend does not have much technical knowledge. I run my own site and have built a notification system, which emails users automatically and then tracks bounces etc. My concern with giving this to my friend is:

1) The system's not perfect and it misses some bounces which you have to do manually (which is fine for me but ideally not for him).
2) There's obviously constant potential problems with getting blocked for spam from ISPs and rectifying this, even with SPF records etc set up (which again is fine for me, but definitely not for him).

As a result the other option would be to get him to sign up with an email marketing company that is responsible for the delivery (and tracking) of emails, ensuring that bounces etc are monitored and delivery is maximised (eg getresponse.com). The problem is i can't find any companies that offer this kind if API, they all manage their own lists and you can't seem to automatically update the list from php, let a lone send out automated emails from scripts. I understand this is to prevent spam, but given my totally genuine situation i'm trying to work out if there is any solution?

I would really appreciate anyones thoughts on how you would solve this/if you know of any companies that offer that type of API/what anyone else has done in a similar situation?

Thanks very much everyone,

Dave

[sudh]

hi

so u want to send email for that u have to use php mail function

$to ="recieptor email id";
$subject = "activation mail";
$message = "user defined";
$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'From: sender mail id'  "\r\n" .
    'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

[deshg]

Sure, i know how to send mail via php, my concern is to do with allowing a non technical user to manage bounce tracking and email delivery rates and wanted to know peoples thoughts on that and whether there were any companies offering suitable APIs?

Thanks for your reply though,

Dave

[sneakyimp]

You might want to check out PHPList.

[deshg]

Sneakyimp,

Thanks so much for that link, i have looked into it and whilst it doesn't solve all of my problems it certainly covers a lot of them.

Thanks very much for the advise,

Dave