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Siebel Marketing Installation and Administration Guide > Installing and Configuring Email Marketing > About Installing and Configuring Siebel Email MarketingThe Siebel Email Marketing Server is a combination of components designed to support high volume, personalized email messages and track email bounces and click-through responses. The Siebel Email Marketing Server consists of the following three components, each with its own installer and each is separate from the Siebel Marketing Server installer:
This section contains the following topics:
Example of Email DeliveryA good understanding of email delivery is helpful in understanding the key principles and items presented in the following topics. The provided example is a simplified description of the email delivery process and describes one email being sent. When you send thousands or millions of emails, the process becomes more complex. Siebel Email Marketing is designed to address the issues associated with sending a large volume of emails. When an email is sent by person A to person B, an attempt is made to deliver the email. The first step in the process occurs when the user clicks Send in their email client. The email client tries to initiate a connection to an email server. NOTE: This email server is often called a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) because of its function or a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Server because of the protocol it uses. When the client has a connection to a Mail Transfer Agent, the Mail Transfer Agent and the client communicate using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The following are important parts of this communication:
If the recipient of the email (person B) has their mailbox on this server, then the server drops the email in the box and the job is done. If person B is on another domain, the Mail Transfer Agent executes a Domain Name Service (DNS) lookup to find the address of another Mail Transfer Agent to communicate with. Another Simple Mail Transfer Protocol conversation occurs and the second Mail Transfer Agent receives the message and delivers it to the mailbox for person. When it is in person B's mailbox, the recipient can retrieve it using another protocol such as Post Office Protocol (POP) and read the message in an email application. Unexpected issues can occur during this process. For example, the domain of the recipient can be unreachable or not exist at all. In this case, an error message, or bounce, is created by the Mail Transfer Agent that identifies the problem and the bounce is returned to the sender of the message (the sender's email address is also called the from address of the SMTP envelope). Another problem may be that the domain has been found but the user does not exist on that domain. Again, a bounce is created and sent back to the sender of the original message. Both of these are examples of hard bounces. This means that not only was the email unable to be delivered but that it can never be delivered. Another type of bounce is a soft bounce, which means that although the email could not be delivered at present, it may be possible to deliver the message in the future. Table 23 lists the possible bounce codes. The Siebel Email Marketing Server InstallationThe Siebel Email Marketing Server consists of three components, each of which comes with its own installer and is separate from the Siebel Marketing Server installer. The installation media for the three Email Marketing Server components are distributed together on media separate from the Siebel Enterprise installation media. The following is a summary of the issues to consider when installing the different components of Siebel Email Marketing. The Email Marketing components can reside outside the firewall, with ports opened for SISNAPI, SOAP (HTTP), and networked file system access through the firewall. Alternatively, the Email Marketing components can reside inside the firewall with ports 80 and 25 opened on the firewall (or proxies) or relays put in place. These components talk to the Siebel Marketing Server using the Siebel Java Data Bean over the Siebel Internet Session API (SISNAPI). For more information about the Siebel Java Data Bean, read the topic about integrating with the J2EE Application server in Transports and Interfaces: Siebel Business Application Integration Volume III. Email Sending Daemon (ESD)The Email Sending Daemon assembles an email to be sent to a list or segment of contacts and prospects and delivers each email to the corporate outbound Mail Transfer Agents. Assembly includes adding headers in front of the email message content and merging personalized data into the message content. The Email Sending Daemon listens on port 80 for SOAP requests from the Siebel Marketing Server. A SOAP request includes the filename of the email message content, the email message headers, and the Marketing Server subwave contacts and prospects list (containing mail merge data). These files are found in the Marketing File System which is commonly a networked directory accessible to the Email Sending Daemon. The Email Sending Daemon must be able to communicate with one or more outbound Mail Transfer Agents to send mailings over the internet. The Email Sending Daemon must be able to tell the Marketing Server when it has completed a subwave as well as deliver details of email address errors that occurred while it communicated using Simple Mail Transfer Protocol to the Mail Transfer Agents (called synchronous bounces). Communications with the Siebel Marketing Server use SISNAPI protocol. The most common placement for the Email Sending Daemon is within the corporate network, behind the DMZ. However, the Email Sending Daemon component can be placed inside the DMZ or outside the firewall, if there is a port opened to connect to the Siebel Marketing Server using SISNAPI protocol, SOAP, and the networked Marketing File System. Bounce Handler Daemon (BHD)Typically, the Bounce Handler Daemon receives and processes bounced mail on port 25 (the default SMTP port). Email messages that have bounced appear similar to regular email, though their email message content and headers probably have noticeable differences in content. For a bounced email to be returned to the Bounce Handler Daemon, the original email must have a usable return address (the SMTP envelope from address). The correct SMTP envelope from address is generated for you using the Bounce Handler Daemon's domain name (supplied by you when you configure the Email Marketing Server). The recommended approach is to place the Bounce Handler Daemon machine in the DMZ. However, some network support technicians may want to place the Bounce Handler Daemon behind an inbound Mail Transfer Agent. The approach that you choose depends on the configuration of your network, DMZ, existing inbound Mail Transfer Agent, and firewall. The following example describes a typical approach: You may have a domain name of oracle.com and an inbound Mail Transfer Agent (in this example mail.oracle.com) for mail to that domain. The Mail Transfer Agent mail.oracle.com currently routes email successfully to machines in the internal network. It may be in the DMZ with a special hole for port 25 traffic or straddling the outer firewall with one NIC in the DMZ and the other NIC on the Internet. The Bounce Handler Daemon may be running inside the DMZ, with an internal-only hostname such as oracle-host.internal.oracle.com. In this example, you would need to choose a Bounce Handler Daemon hostname such as bounces.oracle.com that is not already used by external DNS and then and perform the following steps:
Because the Internet DNS MX records for bounce.oracle.com point to the inbound Mail Transfer Agent, bounced email for the Bounce Handler Daemon is sent there first. Mail.oracle.com should be configured to relay the mail for bounces.oracle.com to the Bounce Handler Daemon using the internal DNS server for the correct internal IP address. Organizations often create IP numbers that cannot be routed within their enterprise. For example, IP numbers starting with 10.* or 192.168.* are only available inside the enterprise. Similarly, organizations often have hostnames, such as my-machine.corp.oracle.com, that are only visible inside the company network. If you use an IP address or hostname that is only available inside your company network for your Bounce Handler Daemon hostname, Mail Transfer Agents outside your network can not connect to the Bounce Handler Daemon. Therefore, the Bounce Handler Daemon server must be available, directly or indirectly, from outside your network. Click-Through Daemon (CTD)The Click-Through Daemon listens on port 80 for HTTP requests (Click-through, Message Open, Forward to a Friend and un-subscription/subscription requests). This component can be placed in the DMZ, inside or outside the firewall, if a port is opened that allows it to connect to the Siebel Marketing Server using SISNAPI protocol. Web proxy servers can be used to route the HTTP requests to the Click-Through Daemon server. Frequently Used Terms for Email MarketingTable 24 contains acronyms and terms frequently used in Email Marketing. |
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