Direct Mailer Requirements

  • Article

Direct Mailer has the following requirements:

  • Software Requirements and Dependencies
  • Mailing List Formats
  • Message Formats
  • Message Sources

Software Requirements and Dependencies

Direct Mailer uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 as its database. Direct Mailer requires SQL Server Agent in order to start recurring mailings; however it is not a requirement that Direct Mailer be installed on the same computer as SQL Server or SQL Server Agent.

For more information about SQL Server, see SQL Server Books Online.

Microsoft Windows 2000 includes the following components, which Direct Mailer is dependent on:

  • Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). ADO enables Direct Mailer to access and manipulate data in its database. To access data on one or more SQL Servers, it uses OLE DB Provider for Microsoft SQL Server.
  • Microsoft Windows Collaboration Data Objects (CDO). CDO provides a set of COM interfaces through which Direct Mailer operates. Direct Mailer primarily employs two major interfaces: IMessage and IConfiguration, which enable you to compose, format, and send Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) messages over the network, as well as perform local delivery.

Mailing List Formats

Direct Mailer supports the following mailing list sources:

  • Text files, such as comma-separated value (.csv) files
  • SQL Server queries
  • Analysis reports
  • Segments list

A direct mail list contains one or more rows of recipients. Each row in the list contains a single recipient and is comprised of the following elements in comma-delimited format:

Parameter Description
E-mail address Required. Name or <name@domain>.
GUID Optional. The unique user ID that will be used to provide content in a personalized mail message.
Message format Optional. Controls the message format type that CDO translates the results into. For example, text, MHTML or MIME.
Language Optional. The code-page value for the mail message.
URL Optional. Provides the ability to pass individual URLs per user to CDO.

Ee799817.note(en-US,CS.20).gif Note

  • If an optional parameter is omitted, you must supply the delimiter in order to line up the subsequent optional parameters.

Message Formats

There are multiple methods of developing content in which to send your direct mail message. The message format controls the type of format into which the Collaboration Data Object (CDO) translates the results. Direct Mailer supports three types of message formats: text, MIME, and MHTML.

  • Text. Formats the mail in ASCII format.
  • MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). An official Internet standard that specifies how messages must be formatted so that they can be exchanged between different e-mail systems. MIME is a flexible format, which extends the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to permit data, such as video, sound, and binary files to be transmitted by Internet e-mail without having to be translated into ASCII format first.
  • MHTML (MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML Documents). Sends portions of a Web page or an entire Web page as a message. The message can include all or portions of the HTML formatting, graphics, and other elements contained in the original Web page.

MHTML builds on top of MIME to provide a more flexible communication of HTML documents. The message can include other linked documents in a MIME multipart/related body part. Links in the HTML to other included parts can be provided by CID (Content-ID) URLs or by any other type of URL. The linked body part is identified in its heading by either a Content-ID (linked to by CID URLs) or a Content-Location (linked to by any other type of URL).

If you want to prevent the Direct Mailer service from formatting e-mail as MHTML, and strictly send the HTML output of the ASP page without any change in the e-mail, see the Direct Mailer ComposeDMLMessage component in the "Compose e-mail" stage of the DMLPipe.pcf file at <drive letter>: \Program Files\Microsoft Commerce Server 2002. The ComposeDMLMessage component is responsible for formatting the message body.

The following figures display e-mail messages for the three message formats (text, MIME, and MHTML) when they encounter HTML content for the following ASP page:

<html>

<body>

<h1>SPRING SALE !!!</h1>

<img src=http://<server name>/SKY.JPG height=100 width=100 />

</body>

</html>

The following figure shows a message that was sent using the text message format. It strips all of the HTML objects, and only sends the text.

Ee799817.note(en-US,CS.20).gifNote

  • The following screenshots are from Outlook Express. They may look different in other e-mail clients.

  • Text message format

    The following figure shows a message that was sent using the MIME message format. It encodes the HTML objects in MIME format, retrieves the SKY.jpg image from the location in the ASP page, and adds it as an attachment. The message only contains the text message.

    Mime message format

    The following figure shows a message that was sent using the message format MHTML. It encodes the HTML objects as images in MHTML format, and retrieves the SKY.jpg image from the location in the ASP page. It encodes the image in BASE-64, and gives the image a CID, to which it internally links the image SRC attribute.

    MHTML message format

Ee799817.important(en-US,CS.20).gifImportant

  • The three message formats (text, MIME, and MHTML) that are available in Business Desk when you create your direct mail campaign are the default values, and are only used if the user-specific e-mail format is NULL. If a user specific e-mail format was specified when you created or imported the mailing list, the user-specific format will be used when sending the direct mail.

Message Sources

Direct Mailer can use a URL or a file path as a message source. If you use a file, you must verify that it resides in a directory that Direct Mailer can access.

For performance reasons, Direct Mailer pre-loads the file content into memory, limiting the file size in memory. The file can be any size, but only the first two million ASCII characters or one million Unicode characters are loaded into memory.

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.