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8 Define E-Mail Server

This chapter contains the following:

E-Mail Architecture for Marketing: How It Fits Together

Manage Marketing E-Mail Sending Daemon: Explained

E-Mail Architecture for Marketing: How It Fits Together

E-mail marketing includes a combination of components designed to support high volume, personalized e-mail messages and track e-mail bounces and click-through responses. This topic provides an overview of the following e-mail marketing installation components and how they fit together:

Business Intelligence and Universal Content Management
E-Mail Sending Daemon (ESD) and the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
Bounce Handling Daemon (BHD)
Click-Through Daemon (CTD)

The following figure displays an example of a typical architectural structure for e-mail marketing server components:

Business Intelligence and Universal Content Management

Segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into groups that are similar in specific ways such as demographics or past purchases. Marketers use segmentation to target groups of customers and allocate marketing resources effectively. Segments and segment trees are selected in marketing campaigns to receive marketing communications and to generate leads. Oracle Marketing Segmentation is fully integrated with Oracle Business Intelligence and uses the same metadata as the Business Intelligence reporting tools. When an e-mail campaign is launched, the contact details are collected using the information in the Business Intelligence Repository, formatted using the Business Intelligence server, and then stored in Universal Content Management. Universal Content Management also stores the campaign e-mail content, headers, footers, and attachments specified during campaign design.

E-Mail Sending Daemon and the Mail Transfer Agent

The e-mail sending daemon assembles each outbound e-mail message for a campaign. It then sends each message to the outbound mail transfer agent (MTA) for delivery.

The e-mail sending daemon listens for SOAP requests from the marketing E-Mail Server. A SOAP request includes the required file names found in Universal Content Management. The e-mail sending daemon must be able to communicate with one or more outbound mail transfer agents to send mailings over the Internet. The e-mail sending daemon must also be able to inform the marketing E-Mail Server when it has completed as well as details of synchronous e-mail bounces for delivery errors that occurred while it communicated using simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) to the mail transfer agents.

The most common placement for the e-mail sending daemon is within the corporate network, behind the DMZ. However, the e-mail sending daemon can be placed inside the DMZ or outside the firewall, if there is a port opened to connect to the marketing E-Mail Server and Universal Content Management.

Bounce Handling Daemon

The bounce handling daemon tracks e-mail messages that cannot be delivered, parses the returned e-mail messages, and records the cause of the e-mail bounce.

It is recommended that you place the bounce handling daemon in the DMZ. However, you can place the bounce handling 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.

Click-Through Daemon

The click-through daemon tracks clicks made by the e-mail recipient on trackable URLs included in the e-mail content. It listens for HTTP requests, such as forward to a friend, subscribe to list, and one click unsubscribe.

You can place the click-through daemon in the DMZ, inside or outside the firewall, if a port is opened that allows it to connect to the marketing E-Mail Server using SOAP. Web proxy servers can be used to route the HTTP requests to the click-through daemon server.

Manage Marketing E-Mail Sending Daemon: Explained

The E-Mail Marketing Server is a combination of components designed to support high volume, personalized e-mail messages, and to track e-mail bounces and click-through responses. The e-mail sending daemon is the outbound component for campaign e-mail messages.

Installing the e-mail sending daemon is part of the provisioning process. For more information on provisioning, see the Oracle Fusion Applications Quick Installation Guide.

This topic includes the following:

Outbound mail transfer agents
Universal Content Management connection
Volume thresholds and throughput
Spam scoring server settings
E-mail sending daemon properties file

Outbound Mail Transfer Agents

The e-mail sending daemon (ESD) needs one or more outbound mail transfer agents (MTAs) to deliver e-mail over the Internet. You specify the host and port numbers of your MTAs in the ESD properties file. If you specify multiple MTAs, then the e-mail sending daemon uses the additional MTAs as backup. For example, when the e-mail sending daemon starts, it uses the first MTA listed in the properties file. If the MTA fails, the next MTA listed is used. To use the first MTA again, you must restart the e-mail sending daemon, usually by rebooting the server.

Universal Content Management

The e-mail sending daemon listens for SOAP requests from the marketing E-Mail Server. A SOAP request includes the required file names found in Universal Content Management. You specify access information for Universal Content Management in the ESD properties file.

Volume Thresholds and Throughput

You can specify or adjust the threshold value property that determines when the campaign priority needs to be honored. When the threshold is reached, the priority value specified during campaign design is used. Processing for campaigns with less priority is temporarily paused until the processing for higher priority campaigns is completed.

You can limit the maximum throughput rate for the e-mail sending daemon, specified in messages per second.

A value of -1 is highest throughput rate possible and is the default setting.
A value of 250-350 supports a medium level of throughput.
A value of 250-50 supports a low level of throughput.

Spam Scoring Server Settings

You can install SpamAssassin, an open-source spam scoring software provided by Apache Software Foundation, to assist marketers in creating campaign content that is less likely to be identified as junk mail by the recipients e-mail software. Once you have completed the installation steps provided by Apache Software Foundation, update the e-mail sending daemon properties file with the software location and to enable the reporting of a spam score and score reasons when testing e-mail campaign content.

ESD Properties File

You can modify the e-mail sending daemon properties file if changes are required after installation.

The following table describes the e-mail sending daemon properties file esd.properties:

Property Name	Description
esd.mailServers	The MTA server, including host name and port number, used by the ESD to deliver e-mails. When listing more than one MTA, use a comma between each MTA.
esd.contentHandler.server	The Universal Content Management URL used to access the content server.
esd.mountPoint	The absolute path of the file directory where the ESD writes the content files.
esd.handler.bounce.webservice.url	The web service URL used by the ESD to log a bounced e-mail message. To locate this web service, search for `MktDialogsCampMemberUpdateComposite` composite deployed within the Marketing SOA environment.
esd.handler.updateStatus.webservice.url	The web service URL used by the ESD to log a completed process. To locate this web service, search for `MktDialogsCampFulfillmentStatusComposite` composite deployed within Marketing SOA environment
esd.priorityThreshold	The threshold that determines when the campaign priority needs to be honored.
esd.smtp.throttleVal	This property will determine the e-mail throughput rate for the system.
esd.spamPort	The port number of the server where SpamAssassin is installed. The default port number is 783.
esd.spamServer	The host name or IP address of the server where SpamAssassin is installed.
esd.reportSpamErrors	The Boolean value used to enable the display of SpamAssassin scoring when previewing marketing e-mails.