pulling out email addresses

[Mark Haney]

I work for an email marketing company that deal directly with physicians 
and consumers (no NOT spam) but what I'm looking for is a tool that will 
handle the bounces, pull the email address that bounced and dump it into a 
text file for dumping into a database so that we don't keep sending to 
dead accounts.  I'd prefer a windows version as we are an all Windows 
shop, but a linux version would get it in the door here which I'm dying to 
do.  Any help would be appreciated.

-- 
Mark Haney
Development, Systems and Network Administration
DoctorDirectory.com
http://www.doctordirectory.com

[William Hooper]

Mark Haney said:
>  what I'm looking for is a tool that will
>  handle the bounces, pull the email address that bounced and dump it into a
>  text file for dumping into a database so that we don't keep sending to
>  dead accounts. 
Why not use mailman and not try to re-invent the wheel?


-- 
William Hooper

[Mark Haney]

Well primarily because of the nature of our emails, we target specific 
groups even within the groups we have.  It's a painful explanation, but 
even more painful to try to work on.  WE are at the mercy of our clients, 
the pharmaceutical companies and need to be able to document how many 
emails were sent and how many were bounced per order.  Does any of that 
make sense?  Mailman would be perfect other than the nature of our 
business.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:47:21 -0500 (EST), William Hooper 
<whooperhsd3(a)earthlink.net&gt; wrote:

>  Mark Haney said:
> > what I'm looking for is a tool that will
> > handle the bounces, pull the email address that bounced and dump it 
> > into a
> > text file for dumping into a database so that we don't keep sending to
> > dead accounts.
>
>  Why not use mailman and not try to re-invent the wheel?
>
>  


-- 
Mark Haney
Development, Systems and Network Administration
DoctorDirectory.com
http://www.doctordirectory.com

[Michael Gargiullo]

On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 14:56, Mark Haney wrote:
>  Well primarily because of the nature of our emails, we target
> specific 
>  groups even within the groups we have.  It's a painful explanation, but 
>  even more painful to try to work on.  WE are at the mercy of our clients, 
>  the pharmaceutical companies and need to be able to document how many 
>  emails were sent and how many were bounced per order.  Does any of that 
>  make sense?  Mailman would be perfect other than the nature of our 
>  business.
>   
Honestly... mailman should work.  You can specify who is allow to post
to the group (you sender) who the mail comes from, and how bounces are
delt with.

If you need more... grab the sources for mailman, and you have a great
starting point.

or send your mailings out from a specific address... then have a with a
bit of php or perl, check that POP3 account and add mail coming back to
your DB.

-- 
Michael Gargiullo <mgargiullo(a)warpdrive.net&gt;
Warp Drive Networks

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:37:20 -0500, Mark Haney wrote:

>  I work for an email marketing company that deal directly with
> physicians 
>  and consumers (no NOT spam) but what I'm looking for is a tool that will 
>  handle the bounces, pull the email address that bounced and dump it into a 
>  text file for dumping into a database so that we don't keep sending to 
>  dead accounts.  I'd prefer a windows version as we are an all Windows 
>  shop, but a linux version would get it in the door here which I'm dying to 
>  do.  Any help would be appreciated. 
procmail plus formail and a helper script written in your favourite
scripting language should do. Shouldn't be a hard job to analyze
MAILER-DAEMON return messages on whether they are about fatal delivery
errors.

--

[Douglas Furlong]

On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 20:41, Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:37:20 -0500, Mark Haney wrote:
>  
>  > I work for an email marketing company that deal directly with physicians 
>  > and consumers (no NOT spam) but what I'm looking for is a tool that will 
>  > handle the bounces, pull the email address that bounced and dump it into a 
>  > text file for dumping into a database so that we don't keep sending to 
>  > dead accounts.  I'd prefer a windows version as we are an all Windows 
>  > shop, but a linux version would get it in the door here which I'm dying to 
>  > do.  Any help would be appreciated.
>  
>  procmail plus formail and a helper script written in your favourite
>  scripting language should do. Shouldn't be a hard job to analyze
>  MAILER-DAEMON return messages on whether they are about fatal delivery
>  errors. 
I have a little experience with regards to bounced email, working out if
it is a transient error message (over quota, on holiday), or whether it
is a permanent failure (over quota, left the company, user/domain does
not exist).

Unfortunately the number of different mail servers AND configurations of
said mail servers is quite astounding. To be honest the best two servers
to deal with are Sendmail and Exchange. The error messages provided by
these two mail servers are relatively consistent (may be because
sendmail admins appreciate consistency, and exchange admins don't know
any better ;)).

So the biggest problem your going to have is to work out whether or not
the response is a fatal error, or one of the other ones. If you are
happy with doing that, then some thing as simple as a shell script could
be run on a specific mail box, or listed as the mail alias, so that it
is processed as it came in to the mail system.

Dougie

[adam lanier]

On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 11:03, Douglas Furlong wrote:
>  Unfortunately the number of different mail servers AND configurations
> of
>  said mail servers is quite astounding. To be honest the best two servers
>  to deal with are Sendmail and Exchange. The error messages provided by
>  these two mail servers are relatively consistent (may be because
>  sendmail admins appreciate consistency, and exchange admins don't know
>  any better ;)).
>  So the biggest problem your going to have is to work out whether or not
>  the response is a fatal error, or one of the other ones. If you are
>  happy with doing that, then some thing as simple as a shell script could
>  be run on a specific mail box, or listed as the mail alias, so that it
>  is processed as it came in to the mail system.
>  
>  Dougie
>   
RFC 2821 (also see RFC 821) specify response codes for MTA's.  To some
degree, these codes are fixed (top level codes, i.e. 550).  Sub-level
codes are implementation specific which means they could (and do) vary
from MTA to MTA.  

The response codes are included in any bounce message, you should be
able to determine (at a minimum) whether they response was a temporary
or permanent failure.