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Frequently Asked Questions
Question:
What can I do to improve my delivery rate? Question:
How can I monitor the success of my email campaign? Question: How can I test to see if my ISP is blocking port 25?
This will start the telnet program and give you a command line prompt. At the telnet command line type in:
where [mailserver] is the name of any mail server you want to connect with. For example:
If your port 25 is not being blocked you should get a reply beginning with "220". ISPs that block your port 25 access will usually allow you to connect to their mail servers, but nobody else's. If you have an email address, but don't know the mail server, use Network-Tools.com and do a "DNS lookup" for the "MX" record. There are often multiple MX records for any given domain. You can use any one, but generally you would start with the one with the lowest priority number. For example, the MX record for yahoo.com is a.mx.mail.yahoo.com. If your port 25 is being blocked you won't be able to use the Direct Send feature in AutoMSW. Instead you will need to use the "SMTP Mail Server" or "MAPI" sending method. Select the "Change..." button in the "From" section in AutoMSW to choose your sending method. Even if your ISP is blocking port 25, they will not block it to their own mail servers, so you can use your ISP's SMTP mail server. If you do not have access to an SMTP mail server, or your ISP provided mail server is too restrictive, you can purchase access to a 3rd party SMTP mail server by searching the web for "SMTP Service". Many 3rd party SMTP mail services provide access over ports other than 25, so even if your port 25 is being blocked, you can still send emails using their mail server. Question:
How do I specify my "From" email address?
or it can include a "display name" in the format shown here:
In the case where
you have a display name, the recipient will see your email being from this
display name (Acme Inc. in this example). This makes for a
more professional looking email. Question: How do I include
special characters in the "Subject"?
where charset is the name of the character set, encoding is either Q for Q-encoding or B for base64 encoding, and encoded text is the Q-encoded or base64-encoded text. For example:
is interpreted as "¡Hola, señor!". For
more information see
MIME Encoded-Word. Question:
How many threads should I use? If you are using your ISP's SMTP server
you may also want to consider sending slower to avoid being accused of
sending spam. To send very slow, you can make use of the
pause between emails option (File / Options...). Question:
Why does my email program prompt me for approval when using the MAPI
send method? If you are using Outlook Express you can disable this prompt with "Tools / Options... / Security / Warn me when other applications try to send mail as me". If you are using Outlook there is no
option to disable the prompt, but there are 3rd party applications that
can be used to eliminate it. We recommend
Quick-Merge. You may also prefer to use
eAnnouncer
to send your emails if you are using Outlook. Question:
Why would I want to use the MAPI send method? Question:
I'm trying to send an HTML message with pictures, but they don't show up
in the received emails?
Instead of:
Example: This example is using Microsoft FrontPage, but would be similar in other HTML editing software. If you don't already have your image(s) on your web server, first upload them using whatever method you prefer (FTP, or publishing with FrontPage). When composing your message use the menu command "Insert / Picture / From File..." to insert an image. In the "Filename" field enter in the full URL to the picture you want to insert. In our example, this would be:
and then click the "Insert" button. When you save your HTML document you may get a "Save Embedded Files" dialog. It will list your picture files. Make sure the "Action" is set to "Don't Save". If it is not, just choose the "Set Action..." button, and choose the "Don't Save: Don't save this file and leave the reference in the page as is." option. Once saved, you can verify that your pictures are referenced properly by looking in the HTML view or the picture properties. The image source should be referenced with the full URL, like:
If all of this sounds too complicated, or you don't have a web server where you can upload your images, you can instead send using a Web Archive (*.MHT) file. AutoMSW supports sending .MHT files, and these will include all the embedded images. See our FAQ on MHT files. Another option is to use
eAnnouncer.
eAnnouncer is an Outlook add-in and will send your messages with
pictures from within Outlook. Question:
Why is the HTML message option disabled? When you choose to send with the MAPI
method AutoMSW uses "Simple MAPI" to talk to your default email
client. The Simple MAPI protocol only supports text based messages
(no HTML). If you would like to use your email client to send bulk
emails
instead of AutoMSW, and you're using Outlook, check out
eAnnouncer. Question:
How do I use Excel to create my mailing list? |
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