Feature Request - Email scrubbing

My first attempt to send the email to members to claim their accounts was stopped by Mailgun about the time I sent out the first 1000 invites because of a high bounce rate (~5%). These were bounces from email addresses that were no longer reachable for some reason.

If I have 10,000 members then I can expect 500 or so bad accounts and I need to search for and change them one at a time. Sounds like something a program should be written to do. lol

I don't actually want to delete the accounts as some of them have posted interesting content and there is a chance that the owner might show up at some point in the future to reclaim the account.

What I would like to have is a script that I can run:

The system creates a quota called "Do Not Mail" if it does not already exist. Notifications are all set to off for members in this quota but I can set module permissions to whatever I want (so I can display any content).

I enter a list of bounced email addresses from (e.g., Mailgun), 1 per line.

The script moves the profile into the "Do Not Mail" quota, sets the notifications all to off, and sets the "the user has claimed their account" flag so when I send the Ning Invite email that email does not get sent to accounts in the "Do Not Mail" quota.

updated by @claygordon: 03/29/15 01:23:40PM

As long as you're using Mailgun then this is mostly supported.

Go into Mailgun SMTP -> Tools -> Processed Bounced Email.

You can basically turn off notifications for those users whose email bounced, set them as inactive, or delete them.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Also - if you're looking to get a list of emails scrubbed, there are companies that perform the service - i.e.

http://verifalia.com/

Hope this helps!


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

I don't have any subscribers at the moment, so that does not appear to be the solution.
I don't want to delete the accounts, for the reasons mentioned.

If I set the bounce to inactive then they are still in the system but none of their content can be seen by anyone, correct?

Also - just to be sure - When I resend the Ning Invite email it won't be sent to the accounts I've made inactive.

This doesn't require subscribers - it strictly works off of any bounced emails that have come in to your Mailgun account. Since many of these users did not signup via your system, there's probably been no chance for Mailgun to "see" a bounce, so it may do nothing. You can always click on "Browse Bounced Email" to see what emails have bounced since you started using Mailgun.

Setting a user to inactive just renders the User account inactive - not the profile.


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

SO - that does not solve my problem.

The issue is bounces I got from sending out the Ning invite email. I want to process those bounces in a way that prevents me from sending out invites to accounts I know will bounce - without having to do it manually - and even then I still need to set the "Member has claimed account" flag manually and I don't know how to do that.

I understand - you're needs and setup here are unique, so we don't have anything "out of the box" that is going to work for you.

Where is the "Member has claimed account" flag located at - is it part of the User Account? Profile?


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Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Brian -

I don't think that my need is unique - I think I am just the first person to have brought it up. I think it's going to turn up in a large percentage of Ning migrations. Ning stopped forwarding bounces to my member broadcast emails so I have no way of knowing which accounts - and for how long - have been unreachable. If I get a lot of bounces I want a way to process them in an automated fashion.

I don't know where the member has claimed account flag is - Brian will know. I don't think it shows up on either the User Account or User Profile forms. Also, imported accounts are set to active so that their content is visible even if they haven't claimed the account. Most of the script is there, the only major changes are to accept a list of email addresses and to turn off all notifications.

I am not competent to write a script that will do this without the risk of seriously mucking up the member database table.