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Siebel Marketing Installation and Administration Guide > Installing and Configuring Email Marketing >
About Siebel Email Marketing
The Siebel Email Marketing Server is a combination of components designed to support high volume, personalized, email messages and to track email bounces and clickthrough responses. The Siebel Email Marketing Server consists of the following three components, each of which has its own installer that is separate from the Siebel Marketing Server installer:
- The Email Sending Daemon (ESD). Assembles each outbound email message for a campaign using the email template (HTML or text) and the recipient list, and then sends each message to your company's outbound Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) for delivery.
- The Bounce Handler Daemon (BHD). Tracks email messages that cannot be delivered, parses the returned email messages, and records the cause of the bounce.
- The Click Through Daemon (CTD). Tracks clicks made by the email recipient on any Siebel-supported links included in the email template.
This topic contains the following information:
Example of Email Delivery
A 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 his or her 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:
- One critical piece of this communication involves the transfer of the email message to the Mail Transfer Agent.
- Another piece of this communication is the passing of the sender's email address. This email address is often referred to as the SMTP envelope from (or sender) address. The use of the term envelope represents the email content as a letter and the SMTP communication as the envelope used to carry the letter.
If the recipient of the email (person B) has his or her 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, then 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. About Bounce Codes
Unexpected issues can occur during the email delivery 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 called the From Address of the SMTP envelope. Another problem might 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 might be possible to deliver the message in the future. Table 15 lists the possible bounce codes.
Table 15. Bounce Codes
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Address Moved |
The recipient has changed the email address and the new address is available. This type of bounce occurs rarely. |
Bad Sender |
The email address is bad: either the address is formatted incorrectly (unlikely) or there is no such user. |
Last Resort |
The bounce parser could not determine the type of bounce, but it has the name of the original recipient. |
Mailbox Problem |
The email address exists, but the mailbox is full or temporarily locked. This type of bounce occurs rarely. |
Message Too Large |
The message size exceeds the recipient's allowable limit. |
Network Problem |
Because of network problems, the MTA is unable to connect to either the receiving Mail Server or some other necessary server (such as a company's LDAP server). This type of bounce occurs rarely. |
Protocol Problem |
The receiving Mail Server does not work with the version of SMTP the MTA uses. This type of bounce occurs rarely. |
Security Problem |
The receiving Mail Server does not allow email from your domain. This can occur when the receiving Mail Server blocks domains of known or suspected spammers. |
System Problem |
The receiving email server is having technical problems and cannot accept mail right now. |
Unparsable |
The bounce parser could not classify the bounce message into any other category. |
NOTE: If a recipient has activated a vacation mail response, then a vacation code is generated when an email is delivered. However, a vacation code is an auto-reply message code, not an error code.
For additional information on bounce codes and the status of email addressees, see About Creating Classification Rules for Bounce Messages and Configuring the Status of Email Addresses. Frequently Used Terms for Email Marketing
Table 16 contains acronyms and terms frequently used in Email Marketing.
Table 16. Frequently Used Terms for Email Marketing
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BHD |
Bounce Handler Daemon. Processes asynchronous bounced email (bounces that do not occur in the SMTP communications between the Email Sending Daemon and the Mail Transfer Agent). |
Bounce |
An email that is returned due to a temporary or permanent error condition. There are hard bounces and soft bounces as described in the following list:
- Hard bounce. The email was not delivered and can never be delivered. For example, if the email address is invalid.
- Soft bounce. The email cannot be delivered because of a temporary problem such as a full mailbox and can be delivered when the problem no longer exists.
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CTD |
Click Through Daemon. Handles the following customer actions:
- Unsubscribe and Subscribe so contacts can opt in or opt out of email lists.
- Forward to a Friend provides method for capturing new email addresses.
- Trackable URLs track customer clicks on an embedded link in an email.
- Read Receipts logs message opens.
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Daemon |
A program that is not invoked explicitly, but is dormant waiting for an action or event to activate it. |
DNS |
Domain Name System. Created to provide a way to translate domain names to their corresponding IP addresses. The DNS server maintains a list of domain names and IP addresses and each request is pointed to the correct corresponding IP address. |
DMZ |
Demilitarized Zone. A section of your corporate network that acts like a neutral zone or buffer between your internal network and the Internet. It is created by placing one firewall between the outside (internet) and Web servers, and a second firewall between the Web servers and your internal network. External users can access servers in the neutral zone, but not servers on the internal network. The servers in the DMZ handle incoming and outgoing traffic. |
DNS groups |
DNS domain names are categorized into groups called a record and each record is given a special name such as MX or A.
- MX (type of record). Specifies a domain name which can receive and possibly relay emails. This domain probably contains a server hosting an MTA.
- A (type of record). Maps a domain name to an IP address.
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ESD |
Email Sending Daemon. Manages the following tasks:
- Email Construction and Personalization.
- Delivery of outbound email to Mail Transfer Agents.
- Synchronous bounced email. Bounces that occur in the SMTP conversation between the Email Sending Daemon and the MTA.
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MTA |
Mail Transfer Agent. A program responsible for receiving, routing, and delivering email messages. MTAs receive email messages and recipient addresses from local users and remote hosts, perform alias creation and forwarding functions, and deliver the messages to their destinations. An MTA is sometimes called a Mail Transport Agent, a mail router, an Internet mailer, or a mail server program. Commonly used MTAs include sendmail, qmail, and Exim. |
SMTP |
Simple Mail Transport Protocol. Used to move each email over the Internet. |
SOAP |
Simple Object Access Protocol. The use of XML and HTTP to access services, objects, and servers in a platform-independent manner. For more information about SOAP, see Oracle Business Intelligence Web Services Guide. |
WSD |
Web Survey Daemon. Resides in the DMZ and supports Web landing sites and surveys without the need for SmartScript. |
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