Using MaxBulk Mailer with Mailgun

[BMcDonald]

Hi.

I'd like to draw your attention to a bulk email service I found that does work with MaxBulk Mailer, though with a few issues.

I had been using Rackspace for a long time and found out they have a bulk mail service called Mailgun. I set up an account, entered the Mailgun server info into MaxBulk Mailer and I send out 9,000 emails in about two hours. Very nice. Nothing complicated. Very easy to set up. Using my local ISP took two days because they throttle me. And the best thing is Mailgun gives you 10,000 free emails every month and only 50¢ for each additional 1,000 emails sent.

Problem is, running the emails through their system doesn't give the feedback I get when I send them out through my local ISP. I don't get any direct alerts in MaxBulk Mailer when emails bounce or are bad for example. The emails just fly out the door uninterrupted. It appears that the emails go into Mailgun's system and are processed before they are actually sent out to the recipients.

It appears their system is mainly designed for people who have their own programmers who develop their own bulk email programs using Mailgun's APIs, which of course I don't have the ability to do.

They do provide a log file that tracks all bad, rejected email addresses but no way yet to actually download the log files. They say that feature is coming soon. I had to copy and paste the info from the screen to a text file to capture all the info, which wasn't horrible. Then I used the Email Extractor to quickly pull out all the bad address to remove from my list. Not horrible.

So I guess I just wanted to let everyone know Mailgun is out there. I haven't needed to use any of the tracking features of MaxBulk Mailer so I don't' know if any of that would work with Mailgun. Be nice if all the features would work. But if you're just wanting a quick and free way to send out a bunch of emails fast, it's worked for me. Very easy to set up an account and all I needed to do was plug in the server info to get it to work.

http://www.mailgun.com

 

[stanbusk]

Absolutely all mail servers work that way. You never know if an address is good or not until you get a bounce. We developed eMail Bounce Handler just for that.

eMail Bounce Handler starts downloading everything from your POP or IMAP mailbox processing all the messages to find out whether they are bounces or not, extracts addresses, deletes them and keeps all other messages untouched. Usually you will use eMail Bounce Handler right after sending a message with MaxBulk or any other bulk mailer, this way:

1.- Shut down all mail applications (to avoid any of them to interfere).​

2.- Verify your recipient e-mail list with eMail Verifier (optional).​

3.- Launch MaxBulk Mailer and send your message.​

4.- Wait until delivery is done.​

5.- Launch eMail Bounce Handler.​

6.- Set it to run every 15 minutes.​

7.- Wait at least 60 to 120 minutes until eMail Bounce handler is finished.​

8.- Save eMail Bounce Handler bounce addresses list (1).​

9.- Rename the file to "DELETE" and drop it over your master list in MaxBulk. (2)​

(1) Click on the 'Export' button (or select the 'File > Export As Text' menu) and in the Fields column select E-mail address and click on the arrow key to move that selection to the Export column. Click on Export and name the file DELETE.

(2) Make sure MaxBulk Mailer is open and the list that you want to update is selected, then drag your DELETE export file that you created in Email Bounce Handler and drop it over your master list in the MaxBulk Mailer window.

Note that you may use the same eMail Bounce Handler document several times, after each mail campaign. Once you reach a given number, say 10 mailings, you can choose to generate the DELETE list with all addresses that have bounced 10 times. That is to make sure you will never delete temporally down or over-quota addresses.

The use of eMail Verifier is totally optional yet that tool will reduce your bounce rate about 70 to 80%. Cleaning a list with eMail Verifier is explained here. It is actually recommended to clean your lists with eMail Verifier since a high bounce rate can flag your message as spam in given systems.

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[BMcDonald]

Hi. thanks for the detailed reply.

When I use MaxBulk Mailer with my local ISP, I get an immediate alert in MaxBulk Mailer that an address is bad. Attached screenshot of a test I did with a bad address. I don't get this kind of immediate feedback when running it through the Mailgun server, which really isn't a big deal unless there's a way to export all the flagged addresses in MaxBulk Mailer.

Also, when using MaxBulk Mailer with Mailgun, I don't get any bounces/rejection notices sent to the return address I use for the mailing so using eMail Bounce Handler wouldn't find anything to handle when logging to that return address account. All the bounces are recorded in Mailgun logs though. The logs separate them into bounced, suppressed, dropped, other. Just have to copy and paste the log text in the browser screen into a text file to capture all the bad addresses. They say they will soon have a button to export the log files which will be very nice. As it is, it only takes me about 5 minutes or less to copy and paste all the log text into a text file.