Questions[bulk](server)

We send out newsletters / bulk mail (double opt-in of course). We automatically delete hard bounces (mailbox unavailable, user unknown, host unknown...) right away from our mailing lists.

But a lot of "Undelivered" mails are generated because the user's mailbox is full / the user is over quota. So the email address still exists, but the mailbox is full.

So the two most common scenarios are probably

a) the user is still using his account and will delete some emails in the near future so he's not over quota any more and can receive emails again.

b) the user abandoned his account (for whatever reason), it ran full and that's that. It will never be used again...

So the first scenario tells me to NOT delete the email address from our mailing list, the second scenario tells me I should delete it. Of course, I don't know.

What's the best strategy in terms of working on the "reputation of my mail server / IP address"? Should I try to send for the next few days / couple of weeks and if it's still not working, should I treat it as b)?

I would assume that most ESP would delete inactive / full email addresses after a certain time so they will become hard bounces anyways? Or would an ESP discourage sending mails to a full mailbox too often?

I have a few zones in my Windows Server DNS.

I wish to add around 50 unique aliases to the existing zone. Is there any trick I can use? I've tried to google for it where the odd post suggests using dnscmd .. but I'm not sure if this is right and if so, how AND what the file format should be.

Assume that all the aliases are in a file.

eg.

test10 Alias(CNAME) www.foo.com

of course, I can wire up the file into any format and columns, required.

When you create user logins in bulk, with set passwords as many users are unlikely to change their passwords, how do you disseminate the information?

Students in our school division are automatically assigned a username and password after registering. I know some schools print out a large list of usernames and passwords and guard them in a binder (and, presumably, homeroom teachers pass out student's login information). [Yes, I know that users should be able to create their own passwords. It has hitherto been untenable to make that work, and, unfortunately, I'm not sure how easily we could change things, technologically or socially, not to mention that some of the students use computers infrequently, and not have a good opportunity to set a new password, leaving their account vulnerable to anyone who could determine their username (not hard) and log in.]

While I know that these are not high-security passwords, I would like to keep them safe. I have also found that staff members ask, "When will this account be created?" (a few hours after the student is properly registered, thank you) and what is the password (I don't know off the top of my head). If it wasn't so insecure, it'd be nice to e-mail secretaries the new passwords to pass on (and whole lists at the start of the year, for that matter). I'd use encryption, but, as office staff's technical ability ranges the gamut, I loathe trying to explain how to decrypt the file. I don't really want to distribute information in printed form, as it is insecure and lists would need to get to a dozen sites. We do have a system staff can log into to look up students, but it doesn't know for sure if the automated system has created the account.

Are there any suggestions on how to responsibly distribute login information?

We insert/delete about 1 million rows of a two million rows table with SSIS.

We have 20 indexes on this table.

Right after the SSIS finished, we're experiencing timeouts in the frontend. The timeouts eventually go away.

I'm suspecting the indexes are causing this during re reorganisation of them.

What can we do?

How do email marketers get success while sending mails? Though their emails volume is very high, they can deliver mails with out any problem like spam or bounce.

If we try to send bulk mails with our own server, Yahoo or Gmail servers reject mails after certain time.

Will email marketers pay anything to Yahoo or Gmail to get delivered their emails? If it is not the case, please suggest me what are the steps we need to consider to setup good SMTP server.