This session turned out to be a really good example of the power of the Open Space format!
It was created just to fill the last time slot so we could get started, so there wheren't really any agenda or any expectations. It turned into a really good discussion on the problems and possibilities of sending newsletters through Umbraco!
Tim's MailEngine
Tim Geyssen of Nibble.be has created the brilliant MailEngine for Umbraco v4. Unfortunately it has a couple of problems:
- Theres a problem with international characters as the mail isn't UTF-8 encoded. A "hacked" DLL can be downloaded here, but notice that it breaks the member property merge functionality.
- Stuff like this isn't really build for mass sendings. There's an estimated theoretical limit of 3-400 recipients. If you have more than that, the sending page just won't have enough time to send before it times out (default is 20 minutes). You need a 3rd party, dedicated solution (an ESP or Email Service Providor) if you have more recipients.
When I find some time I'll turn the "hack" into a propper version, and maybe add some functionality.
Using 3rd party mail engines (ESP's)
A couple of people has either written their own, propper mail engine. Or successfully integrated with a 3rd party Email Service Providor (ESP) like the popular CampaignMonitor.
Bob of Malicious thinkTank mentioned he uses StreamSend together with Umbraco.
Integration is quite easy to do, as most ESP's has an XML-based WebService interface. Which means you can easily build a simple integration using just XSLT macros.
Here's also a picture of the people attending the session.