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Implementing Spam Scoring of Email Templates Using SpamAssassin

This topic describes how to configure Email Marketing to integrate with SpamAssassin so that users can generate spam scores for email treatment templates before they are used in a campaign.

Generating a spam score for an email treatment template allows Siebel Marketing users to assess whether the emails generated using the template are likely to be classified as spam and be rejected by recipient's spam filters. If the email template generates a high spam score, then users can then modify the email template content until it passes the spam scoring test.

Siebel Marketing uses Apache SpamAssassin, an open source product released under the Apache License 2.0, to run the spam scoring test. SpamAssassin provides an API for an email sending component, in this case, the Email Sending Daemon, to test an email message against the scoring system and report any potential problems.

After spam scoring is enabled, when a user clicks the Verify and Preview button on the email editor to preview an email template message, spam scoring data for the email is displayed, as shown in Figure 8. The user can then manually correct any issues and preview the email template again to re-score the content.

Figure 8. Spam Scoring Data for an Email

Siebel Marketing does not embed Spam Assassin, but the Email Sending Daemon can be connected to a Spam Assassin instance. This involves installing the Spam Assassin application, then configuring the Email Sending Daemon to connect to the SpamAssassin service as described in the following procedure.

To implement spam scoring of email templates using SpamAssassin

1. Download and install SpamAssassin from the Apache SpamAssassin Web site at

   http://spamassassin.apache.org/

2. Extract the files from the zip file you downloaded into a folder named SpamAssassin.
3. Start the SpamAssassin server using one of the following procedures:
   • If the Email Sending Daemon and SpamAssassin are running on the same computer, then open a command prompt Window and enter the following command to start the SpamAssassin server:

   spamd -d

   By default, the spamd -d command accepts connections only from the local system. For example:

   C:\SpamAssassin >spamd.exe

   • If the Email Sending Daemon and SpamAssassin are located on different computers, then use the following command at the DOS prompt to start SpamAssassin:

   spamd -d -i listen_ip_address -A allowed_hosts

   where:

   • listen_ip_address is the address on which SpamAssassin is to listen.
   • allowed_hosts is a list of the IP addresses authorized to connect to this SpamAssassin instance.

     For example, enter the following (in this example, 0.0.0.0 indicates that SpamAssassin is to listen on all IP addresses):

   C:\SpamAssassin >spamd.exe -D -i 0.0.0.0 -A ESD_Machine_I.P

4. You must now connect the Email Sending Daemon to the SpamAssassin Server by editing properties in the esd.properties file as follows:
   1. Navigate to the esd.properties file in the ESD_root installation directory.
   2. Open the esd.properties file in a text editor.
   3. Locate the SpamAssassin Server Setup section of the file, then add values for the parameters shown in the following table.

      Parameter	Value
      esd.spamServer	Enter the host name of the SpamAssassin server. Specifying a value for this parameter enables the spam scoring feature. If you do not want to enable spam scoring, then leave the value of this parameter as esd.spamServer=CHANGE_ME.
      esd.spamPort	The port number used by SpamAssassin. The default is 783.
      esd.reportSpamErrors	Set this parameter to true so that SpamAssassin error messages are displayed to the user, for example, if an error occurs connecting to the SpamAssassin server.