Benefits of using Mandrill for email delivery

[Fred.]

I had issues with this. I ran a database query to remove ALL watched threads for every user, put a thread up to notify them this was done and any new registrations does not automatically receive email on threads.

You could just do it for this specific user though, mines a new board so easier to do.

If i'm going to do that i'm going to harm more people. The Avg. Open Rate 70.6% so people like the e-mails and read them.

 

[Zynektic]

Do it for specific users complaining then put a thread up explaining why users receive emails from threads and how they can remove them from being watched?

I explained that to some users on my forum and they replied that they were new to using forum software or no one ever explained anywhere on altering alerts/preferences.

 

[Fred.]

Do it for specific users complaining then put a thread up explaining why users receive emails from threads and how they can remove them from being watched?

I explained that to some users on my forum and they replied that they were new to using forum software or no one ever explained anywhere on altering alerts/preferences.

I was planning to do that
That should make a difference. At least the information is on the forum then.
I'm going to do that.

 

[Robby]

I also use mandrill.
The system recounts daily so your reputation will go up shortly. 100 spam complaints from the same user is usually 1 complaint.

 

[Fred.]

Thanks Robby

I see a lot of orange dots with "Spam Complaint" and message "Queued mail for delivery" and one red dot with "Rejected" and message "Spam"
If I see the spam complaints on the dashboard they all count.

I put up a message on the forum to disable e-mail notification, I hope they read it.

 

[Zynektic]

Well, if the information is there they cannot moan they had not been warned. If you see someone excessively setting it as spam then even if it counts as 1 spam like Robby said, you can set their settings to not send out watched emails to keep them from doing it at least.

 

[Fred.]

I banned that user, but she used older e-mails to mark as spam.

Ok, all done now. That should do it.
Thanks!

 

[Sim]

Last week I noticed a member that marked me as spam, so I banned her with notification "Marked e-mail as spam"
Today I see there are a lot more spam complains, all from the same user.

After some research I saw she was watching one of my most busy forums and he had direct e-mail notification on.
So she got an e-mail for every thread that was created. (She probably switched that on without knowing what she was doing)

So it looks like she is upset now and started marking all the e-mails as spam.
Not good for me because the reputation goes down because of a stupid member that doesn't know what she is doing!

Is there anything I can do?
I Guess it does make a difference if the same user marks me 100 times for spam or only once? Or not?

Edit that user in your admin area look for the little "Actions" menu in the top right hand corner. Select "Manage Watched Threads" and disable email notifications.

That being said - if you've already banned her, then the system shouldn't be sending any new emails - she's probably just marking existing emails as spam.

Not much you can do about that.

One person marking emails as spam won't make much difference to your overall reputation.

I wouldn't worry too much about it - it's far more important that you stop sending emails to her than anything else - which you have done by banning her.

 

[Sim]

FYI - Mandrill have changed their pricing for new accounts.

You can get a "test" account with up to 2,000 emails for free, but once you've sent a total of 2,000 emails (that's total, not per month), you'll need to upgrade to a paid account.

Accounts now come with a $9.95 per month minimum charge, which gives you up to 25,000 emails per month. Costs for emails above the base level remain the same as they were before (eg $0.20 per thousand for the next 1 million emails). There are discounts if you link you Mandrill account with a paid MailChimp account.

So far, all of my existing Mandrill accounts have kept their 12,000 free emails per month - I've not seen any announcements about whether this will change - but I tried to sign up for a new Mandrill account today for a client and noticed the pricing changes

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

So, I just want to understand what Mandrill does, because I know when it's used because Thunderbird has a tendency to always mark Mandrill-generated messages "This message may be a scam."

Does it basically re-route all your outbound forum messages around your server? So for instance if my host had a hourly limit in place (let's say it's 100) then no forum-generated e-mails would count toward that, correct?

If I also use the same server for other e-mails, those would not go through the Mandrill service, correct? For instance if I have a "treasurer@myforum.com" or "thatguy@myforum.com" and I either managed these via POP or IMAP, these would not go through Mandrill...or would they?

 

[Jake B.]

So, I just want to understand what Mandrill does, because I know when it's used because Thunderbird has a tendency to always mark Mandrill-generated messages "This message may be a scam."

Thunderbird only does this if you enable the link click tracking IIRC. It sees what the link 'should' be, and what it actually is since it replaces links with a link that goes through their own site so they can track when it was clicked for you -- this is an option you can turn off of course.

Does it basically re-route all your outbound forum messages around your server? So for instance if my host had a hourly limit in place (let's say it's 100) then no forum-generated e-mails would count toward that, correct?

Yep, it's intended for transactional emails (such as those sent when someone registers, new posts are made, etc.)

If I also use the same server for other e-mails, those would not go through the Mandrill service, correct? For instance if I have a "treasurer@myforum.com" or "thatguy@myforum.com" and I either managed these via POP or IMAP, these would not go through Mandrill...or would they?

Nope, they'd go through the SMTP server on your server

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Awesome @Jake B. thanks for that! This is the solution to 2 of my problems: hourly limit on one host, and GoDaddy relay servers on the other.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

What about the Xenforo automated bounce email handler, does that conflict with Mandrill? Is there a specific way that has to be set up?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I figured it out, thanks.

 

[vlom31]

What about the Xenforo automated bounce email handler, does that conflict with Mandrill? Is there a specific way that has to be set up?

I figured it out, thanks.

Would you mind sharing mate ?
I just setup Mandrill yesterday, and was wondering the same thing about the bounces.

 

[Jake B.]

Would you mind sharing mate ?
I just setup Mandrill yesterday, and was wondering the same thing about the bounces.

There is an option in mandrill to forward all bounce notifications to an email address. Just use that

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Would you mind sharing mate ?
I just setup Mandrill yesterday, and was wondering the same thing about the bounces.

Pretty straight forward actually

I set up a noreply address for the default. This one has an autoresponder set up in cPanel so that if someone replies to an alert they get a "don't do that, you moron" message

Then set the transport method according to mandrill (username from mandrill, API key for password)


This screen in mandrill gives you the info for the above



Then you set up a bounce email address, and make that the catch-all, and point your auto handler to that (your host, email, password, etc) just as if mandrill didn't exist



Then you go to mandrill -> setting -> sending defaults and fill in your bounce email address


done

Working perfect for me right off the bat

 

[vlom31]

Pretty straight forward actually
...
Working perfect for me right off the bat

Thanx a lot for the detailed explanation !