Start sending from your Bulk Emailing System

FAQ for this step is available here.

In this step

• The Frequently Asked Questions about bulk emailing no one wants to answer
• Learn about the warm-up process
• Learn more about the Custom EMS features
• Register FBLs
• Register on Postmaster areas
• Learn how to use PowerMTA Management Console to control and configure your PowerMTA instances
• How to create backups
• Some words about email templates

Frequently Asked Questions about bulk emailing

Email Marketing Software Documentation

Read the documentation for your Custom Email Marketing Software and familiarize yourself with all the features. The Custom EMS is a collection of core features carefully analyzed and seamlessly knitted to make email marketing, email automation, lead nurturing, and sales process management more efficient and easy.

The complete Custom EMS Documentation is available for download in the Members area.

Feedback Loops and Postmaster Areas

To create FBL email accounts from your control panel click "App Store>Mail Server Settings>User".

• Bluetie
• Comcast
• Fastmail
• Libero (Italiaonline)
• Mail.ru
• OpenSRS/Hostedmail (Tucows)
• Rackspace
• Seznam
• Synacor
• Terra
• UOL

Save time setting up and managing Validity-hosted complaint feedback loops by using Universal Feedback Loop. The Universal Feedback Loop is a single FBL management tool to simplify the configuration process and coordinate subscriptions in one location. All above-mentioned providers are covered plus all listed below.

• Universal Feedback Loop
  • gandi.net
  • LaPoste.net
  • Liberty Global
  • Locaweb
  • SFR
  • SilverSky
  • Swisscom
  • Telecom Italia
  • Telenet
  • Telenor
  • Telstra
  • Virgilio
  • Virgin Media
  • Ziggo

Other FBL Services

More about PowerMTA Management Console

Backups

One of the most important parts of keeping a well-maintained bulk email system is keeping backups of your servers. You never know what can happen.

The best way to do backups is to take snapshots of your servers from within your VPS provider's dashboard. Keep in mind that some providers delete snapshots after a certain amount of time so make sure to recreate them once in a while. If something goes wrong and you are able to keep your server, snapshots are the fastest way to get your server back online in a fully working state.

But of course, you must also be ready for other scenarios where you will not be able to keep your server and will have to find another VPS provider. MTA servers aren't problematic since installation is quick and there really isn't any data worth keeping on them. So in case your MTA is taken down, just follow Step 3 and create a new server.

A bigger problem can occur if your Main server is ever taken down. If you followed my suggestions and you don't have MTA servers with the same provider you shouldn't worry too much. Your Main server isn't doing anything that could break the provider's TOS. But just to be safe let's create a backup of your EMS.

Create a Backup for the Main Server

CONTROL PANEL - MAIN SERVER

Go to your Mains control panel and in the left menu click on "Files". Navigate to the folder of your main domain (/www/wwwroot/yourmaindomain.com).

Download the yourmaindomain.com.zip file by right-clicking it and selecting "Download". Wait for the download to finish then right-click the file again and select "Delete". Confirm file deletion and move the file to a safe location on your computer or in the cloud. Continue with database backup.

Content Locked

Login or sign up to see how to create a Backup for the Main Server.

Confirm by clicking the "Execute" button. Wait for the operation to finish and close the window informing you that the backup has finished.

Reload the "Databases" page by pressing F5 then click on "Exists(1)" in the row of your EMS database. A new window will open. Click on "Download" and close the window.

Save the file that you just downloaded to the same location as your files backup.

Restore Main Server

Since your new server will come with a new IP the best thing to do is make a fresh install as described in Step 2 but don't complete the EMS install step only add the website and database. After you are done with that go to "Files" and upload and decompress the files back zip. After extraction is done delete the zip.

Go to "Databases" and click "Import" in the row of your database. Click "Upload from local" and drag and drop the "emsoftware.sql.gz". Confirm by clicking the green "Upload" button. Wait for the upload to finish and close the windows.

Now click "Import" next to the uploaded file and press green "confirm". If your SQL database name, user, and password are the same as before you can log in to your EMS. If you had to change them open your SSH client and connect to the Main server. Do the following.

SSH - MAIN SERVER

And save with CTRL+X. Your EMS is now ready.

Email Accounts

As already mentioned an important part of bulk emailing is checking your own mail. For this, you will need a mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook. Since you are into bulk emailing I am not going to teach you how to add an email account to your preferred client.

CONTROL PANEL - MAIN SERVER & MTA SERVERS

You can get the login info for your email accounts by going to the control panel where you click on "App Store" and click "Settings" next to "Mail Server". A new window will open. Here click on "User" and you will get everything you need to add your accounts to the mail client. Do this for all your servers.

You finished the Guide!

Congratulations!

You now have a perfectly configured bulk email system ready to start sending. You can start creating lists, and campaigns, import your recipients and ...

But before you do that you should really take a break and spend some time with your family, and friends or just go for a walk and stretch your body.