The CurrCon Java Applet displays prices on this
web page converted with today’s exchange rates into your local international currency,
e.g. Euros, US dollars, Canadian dollars, British Pounds, Indian Rupees…
CurrCon requires an up-to-date browser
and Java version 1.8, preferably 1.8.0_131.
If you can’t see the prices in your local currency,
Troubleshoot. Use Firefox for best results.
Charities, churches and clubs need to broadcast
email notices to all their members. Typical tools for doing this are hard to use. They
are designed primarily for spammers rather than for those with a legitimate need to send
bulk emails. Email programs like Eudora are not designed to work with large mailing
lists. It is tedious breaking the lists up into bite size pieces for them. In contrast,
the CMP (Canadian Mind Products) bulk emailer was primarily designed to be easy to use.
How It Looks to the Subscribers
The emails that arrive to your
subscribers looking as if they had been individually addressed in the TO: field. They may
be formatted (HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)) or plain. They might contain embedded images.
They might include attachments. However, the emails are not customised in any way.
Everyone gets exactly the same message. There is no customising the
message for each recipient, other than the TO: field. Subscribers cannot see the names of
any other subscribers. Unlike a BCC:, they see themselves as the primary recipient of the
message.
Benefits
Here are some reasons to use the
CMP Bulk Emailer rather than the competition:
You can use any email program you are familiar with to the prepare the bulk email.
You don’t have to learn a new tool.
You can use any of the fancy features of your mail program including fonts,
colours, sizes, pictures and enclosures.
It can fairly easily integrate into your existing database. It does not insist you
learn a new program to track your clients.
Every email looks to the end user as if you had individually sent it only to
them.
You don’t have to set up, configure and manage a complicated local mail
server, though you can if you want super speed.
You don’t have to configure anything. CMP
does that for you and will talk you through the setup. You don’t need to be a
computer whiz to use the program.
The program does an exhaustive series of checks on email addresses before actually
sending the emails. This means you get fewer bounced emails.
You don’t need to rent space on a web server. The bulk emailer is connected
to the Internet only when it is sending emails.
It costs only
.
Disadvantages
The CMP
Bulk Emailer is not a ListServ. Subscribers cannot add or
remove themselves from the list. If you need that ability, see the ListServ Software Vendors.
With the CMP Bulk Emailer there is no way to customise each
email to the recipient, e.g. inserting their subscription expiry date.
The CMP
Bulk Emailer is not suitable for lists of hundreds of thousands of people. It is
designed for small lists, e.g. club memberships or lists of newspapers or lists of
politicians not spamming. Because it normally uses a remote mailserver, it is not
particularly fast.
The CMP
Bulk Emailer does not come with a database. You either have to get me to write you one
or you have to use one you get elsewhere, or you have to do something Mickey Mouse with
a word processor or spread sheet.
The CMP
Bulk Emailer costs
.
Some ListServ software is free, though you require a costly webserver to run it on.
Most costs over
and is considerably more complex to manage.
How It Works
To send a bulk email, compose your email exactly as you
would send it to an individual. It can be formatted or not. It can have colours and fonts It must have a subject. It can
have embedded pictures. It can be plain, or styled (with HTML
) or both. It can have attachments. Use whatever tool you are familiar with to create the
email, e.g. Eudora, Opera, Outlook, Pegasus, Pine, Polarbar, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, etc.
You can even use a WebMail program such as HotMail. Use any of the fancy features you
please.
Create a list of email addresses and names you want this mail sent to. You might use a
simple Abundance database to do this, or you might create it with a word processor, or
you might export it from your client database. [Abundance is just a computer language for
writing database applications with extensive validation of data. It is relevant only if
you don’t already have a database.] You database should give you the ability to
select the people by various criteria to spin off to send a letter to.
The list is technically called a CSV (Comma-Separated Value) Comma Separated Value
list. Entries look like this:
mayor@city.victoria.bc.ca is the email address.
Mayor Lowe is the name that will appear on the TO:
Mayor Allan Lowe is the person’s full name. This is useful
if you get a reject to figure out which person it was.
0001 is the optional account number if you have a database with
account numbers. It too is useful it tracking rejects.
You then attach the list to your email. Then you send the
message to an email account reserved for accepting bulk email to be relayed, e.g.
bulk@mydomain.com. In theory, you could send it to yourself,
but having special reserved account for bulk emails is simpler.
Then you fire up the bulk email processor by clicking STARTBULK. You can leave it up to process as many different bulk email
masters as you want. It does not matter which you do first, STARTBULK or send email masters. When you are done, you can shut it down by
clicking STOPBULK. Each email will appear to have been
individually sent from whomever originated the bulk email. Every one will be identical.
Nobody will see any other names on the CC:
You will get an email back from the bulk emailer about rejects. Make sure you research
them and fix the database. You may also get a few individually bounced emails back later.
They too need to be researched and corrected.
If you are nervous, you can do a test run first, that sends only a copy back to you,
by putting don’t send as the subject.
Use With Eudora
To use with the Eudora email program, compose the
bulk email as if you were going to send it to an individual recipient. You can use any of
the fancy formatting features such as colour, bold, type sizes and italic. Address it to
the special bulk account, e.g. bulk@myisp.com. Right click Attach file and specify the name of the file listing the email
addresses of the recipients, usually produced by an abundance program, e.g.
C:\CIV\LIVE\EMAILS.TXT. Then type click the STARTBULK icon. After all the emails have been sent, click the STOPBULK icon.
Recovering
If for any reason your computer or the program should
crash during a bulk mail run, you will have to type CLEARBULK to
reset it. To be very safe, you might want to manually read the mail you sent to the bulk
email account, to clear the queue of work, figure out just what was sent and then resend
what was not. Without that step, it should recover fine, with some possibility of sending
some messages twice.
Prerequisites
You need two standard SMTP/POP3 email
accounts one for creating the emails e.g. myChurch@somedomain.com and being the official sender of the mails and
the other used for relaying the emails, e.g. bulk@somedomain.com. Often these come bundled free with your Internet
access. WebMail accounts will not work, such as yahoo.com
or hotmail.com. You can often borrow email accounts from
someone who has extras they are not using. I repeat these are two perfectly ordinary
email accounts, nothing special about them at all. In a pinch you should be able to
rent the pair of them for under
a month from almost any ISP
(Internet Service Provider) on the planet. I would recommend renting the locally for
better phone support and for getting help from friends already familiar with their
peculiarities.
You also need a decent email program for creating the
emails. I suggest Eudora. It lets you create many special effects including adding
pictures, coloured text, varying fonts and sizes of text. You can download a free copy
from Eudora.com. If you are already using
Outlook you could continue to use that, though I would strongly recommend against it
since it is so prone to spreading viruses and worms.
If you are unfamiliar with computers, it will be much easier on you if you find
someone locally, not necessarily a computer expert, who has set up email accounts and
email software before. Once you have the two email accounts set up and working with
Eudora, it is relatively easy to get the Bulk Emailer working after that.
You need a Pentium/AMD class PC (Personal Computer)
or better, capable of running Java. I would recommend having 1 GB or more of
RAM (Random Access Memory). You are not limited to running on
W2K, XP, W2003, Vista, W2008, W7-32, W7-64, W8-32, W8-64, W2012, W10-32 and W10-64
machines, though it will be simpler if you are. The bulk emailer will run on anything
that supports Java version 1.6 or later and JavaMail, e.g. Linux. You can get a jump
start on checking out the suitability of your machine by installing java and seeing if you can run
the Biorhythms Applet.
Java Requirements and Troubleshooting
Bulk
is a Java application
to Bulk Emailer.
If it does not work…
This Java application
needs 32-bit or 64-bit Java 1.8 or later.
For best results use the latest 1.8.0_131 Java.
It works under any operating system that supports Java
e.g. W2K, XP, W2003, Vista, W2008, W7-32, W7-64, W8-32, W8-64, W2012, W10-32, W10-64, Linux, LinuxARM, LinuxX86, LinuxX64, Ubuntu, Solaris, SolarisSPARC, SolarisSPARC64, SolarisX86, SolarisX64 and OSX
To ensure your Java is up to date, check with Wassup.
First, download it and run it as an application independent of your browser,
then run it online as an Applet to add the complication of your browser.
If the above application does not work,
check the Java console for error messages.
If the above application does not work, you might have better luck with the downloadable version available below.
If you are using Mac OS X and would like an improved Look and Feel,
download the QuaQua look & feel
from randelshofer.ch/quaqua.
UnZip the contained quaqua.jar
and install it in ~/Library/Java/Extensions
or one of the other ext dirs.
Upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer or another browser.
If you still can’t get the program working
click the red HELP button below for more detail.
If you can’t get the above application working
after trying the advice above and from the red HELP button below,
have bugs to report or ideas to improve the program or its documentation,
please send me an email at.
If you send out thousands of emails, your
ISP (Internet Service Provider) might start complaining. He may impose a quota. One way around
this is to do the mailing in batches. Let us say you were signed up with shaw.ca who puts a limit of 1000 outgoing
emails per day on all business accounts. Let’s say you had under 300 emails going out as part of your normal traffic. That leaves you
700 to use for bulk emails. You split your mailing into batches
of 700. It might take you several days to get your bulk mailing out that way. If you
prepare you mail list with an Abundance program, you would use the pages feature to select the correct batch.
If anyone complains about your emails as spam, even if they deliberately
asked for them, your ISP may shut you down. So you want to check
with your ISP first that they won’t mind what you plan to
do and they won’t block you.
What are you options if your ordinary email provider is not suitable? You can search
with Google for bulk email
hosting for ISPs (Internet Service Providers)
happy to take your bulk email business.
If you are more adventurous, you can set up you own email server, in effect, become a miniature
ISP and handle your own mail sending. You would need to run the
email server software all the time so that it could both resend failed emails and accept
rejects. This is considerably more of a technical challenge that running the bulk
emailer.
The advantage of the mailserver approach is it runs faster, since
ordinary ISPs
put a choke on the mail to keep the flow to a dull roar. The bottleneck in using the bulk
emailer is the speed at which the mail server accepts mail to send. The disadvantage is
the mail server approach is more complicated since you have to buy, install, configure
and maintain an email server. Even with your own server, your ISP
connection provider might field complaints about your emails and shut you down. When you
use a hosting service who is bulk email-friendly that is not a problem. Complaints
usually go to the mail provider, not your connection provider.
Telus blocks outgoing SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) port 25
traffic. This discourages Telus customers from having email accounts on other servers.
This would be a problem if the Telus email account itself had too onerous a quota. Bulk
itself does not absolutely require SMTP25 access to other than one email account, though it does need
it for the optional mailserver validation. Further, though a private mail server used to
greatly speed mailing up, would require SMTP25 access to outside servers.
The key is to be upfront with your ISP
and your email provider about what you plan do, telling them just how many bulk emails
you plan to send each day to make sure they have no objections. Otherwise they will
interfere and block you in many ways defeating the purpose of the program. They are often
concerned that you might up to some sort of spamming.
Configuring
When you order the program, I burn into it various
facts about you, such as the names of the email accounts you want to authorise to use
your bulk mailer and the names your email servers. When the program arrives, it is
100% ready to go. There is nothing for you to configure. I will
work with you until you are successful.
I will guide you to tell me such things as:
The email account, login and password you want to use for relaying bulk mail.
The list of people who are authorised to use the program.
The name of your mailserver.
This information all goes in a Java class called CustConfig.java. The program is written in Java, so part of the installation process requires installing the
Java runtime, which can then be used for any Java programs. There is no extra cost for
this, just extra steps in the installation process.
Configuring Details
To make the program work, normally
you would hire me to together custom configure a piece of the program that looks
something like this:
I will guide you to prod your mail provider to give us the information we need to set
this up. If you have some experience with email setup and Java programming, you can
configure and recompile yourself.
You must reconfigure, rebuild (recompile the Java source and recreate the jar). Just
configuring the CustConfig.java file is not
sufficient.
Costs
The bulk emailer itself free.
I thought you would like to see the prices on this webpage in
, but you can change that instantly, thanks to the Canadian Mind Products CurrCon Applet that you too could use on your
own website to display prices in any world currency using today’s exchange rates.
The bulk emailer itself is free. If you are a programmer or have a friend who is,
you can probably set it up yourself without my help.
for coaching you through installation and your first few emails.
If you want a minimal Abundance database that just tracks your members and their
email addresses and nothing else, that would cost about
It would let you maintain a list of all your members and select out groups of them
based on targets, e.g. for a church you might have a target
for choir members, another for board members, another for large contributors, another
for people who volunteer for bingo night, etc. You specify which targets you want to
include in any given mailing. Some active members many on be ten different targets, but
they will still get the mailing only once.
If you want a custom-written Abundance database to track your members and various
facts about them and print reports, mail labels etc, that would cost about
If you want a custom-written Abundance database to track your members and money,
issuing tax receipts etc. that would cost
to
.
We would have a discussion about your needs and I could give you a firm price
quotation for any custom work. Send an email to
.
To install, extract the zip download with WinZip,
(or similar unzip utility) into any directory you please,
often J:\ — ticking off the
use folder names option.
To check out the corresponding source from the Subversion repository, use the TortoiseSVN repo-browser to access bulk source in repository with [Tortoise] Subversion client on wush.net/svn/mindprod/com/mindprod/bulk/.
After you have installed the jar, you can run it as an application. Type:
java -jar J:\com\mindprod\bulk\bulk.jar parms
adjusting as necessary to account for where the jar file is.
download ASP PAD XML program description for the current version of Bulk Emailer.
Bulk Emailer is free. You are free to use the program as-is without payment.
However, it requires programming skill to configuration.
The fee is for my time to customise the
program for you and help you install it.
Check out the prerequisites carefully and
email me to discuss your needs before you buy.
Non-military use only.
Please read the feedback from other visitors,
or send your own feedback about the site. Contact Roedy.
Please feel free to link to this page without explicit permission.
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Mind
Products
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