ActivMail (cf_mail) and Bare LF problem

[rdk8487]

I am successfully using the cf_mail tag (from ActivMail) to deliver hundreds or thousands of emails at a time. However, a very small percentage of the emails get bounced. This never happened when I used the standard cfmail tag with ColdFusion MX7. Can anyone suggest what I need to do to tweak the tag to stop this?

Here's an example. The URL in the message is where the problems is listed as being with Bare LFs.
See http://pobox.com/~djb/docs/smtplf.html.

>Your message has encountered delivery problems
>to the following recipient(s):
>
>jkellman@blahblah.com
>(Was addressed to jkellman@blahblah.com)
>Delivery failed after 43 attempts within 2 days 4 hours and 37 minutes451
>See http://pobox.com/~djb/docs/smtplf.html.
>
>
>Failed to deliver to domain kellman.com after 43 tries.
>Last error was:
>No recipients were successfully delivered to.

[Fetch]

I've never heard of this problem with ActivMail, but I suspect you're simply overloading it. Try scaling back the number of messages you send at one time and see if that reduces the number of bounces.

You may want to check out coolfusion.com - I believe houseoffusion.com used IMS software from there to handle their large mailing lists.

Alternatively, an actual list server program would be even better - find one that can access email addresses from a common database format that you're using and then use CF to 'execute' the list by sending a single message, instead of relying on CF to send ALL the messages for you. No matter how good a CF tag is at sending mail a commercial SMTP program, especially one designed with bulk mailing in mind, will always do better.

[Newsgroup_User]

I've never heard of this problem with ActivMail, but I suspect you're simply
overloading it. Try scaling back the number of messages you send at one time
and see if that reduces the number of bounces.

You may want to check out coolfusion.com - I believe houseoffusion.com used
IMS software from there to handle their large mailing lists.

Alternatively, an actual list server program would be even better - find one
that can access email addresses from a common database format that you're using
and then use CF to 'execute' the list by sending a single message, instead of
relying on CF to send ALL the messages for you. No matter how good a CF tag is
at sending mail a commercial SMTP program, especially one designed with bulk
mailing in mind, will always do better.

[rdk8487]

I don't think it's really a case of overloading. I don't have any broadcasts that are more than 2,500 and I get this message even when the run is 400 or so.

[Fetch]

I would have to stick with my original answer then - ditch ActivMail in favor of using a real list server program; it will get you more 'bang for your buck' anyway.