Mass email solution?

[Negative]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a mass email solution, and was wondering if anyone here has any experience with a solution.

Background: we have a (MS SQL) database with around 70,000 customers. We also use state-provided lists (in character-delimited format). I am looking for a solution (preferably something we can run ourselves - bandwidth is not an issue) that would allow us to pull email addresses from the database and/or the character-delimited files and send emails, that takes care of the opting-out process (email receiver clicks a link, email address is removed from list), and that allows us to build lists (one email list for all customers, one for part of the customers, one for another part of the customers...). A nice plus would be a web-based front end so our marketing department can use it without having to bother me

Mailing List Deluxe ( http://internet-soft.com/mailing.htm ) seems to be able to do what I want, but I thought I'd ask here before starting to mess with trial versions...

Thanks!

[oofki]

Im not sure about mssql but in oracle you can setup "jobs." If you make a front end to submit a job to run it could send the emails for you. Once again, I know oracle can send emails and I am not sure about mssql.

You would need:

A decent database engineer who can write the equiv. of pl-sql (what ever it is called for MSSQL). They will need to define a job that can be submitted with paramaters (email title, email body, when to send, etc)

A decent web developer that can call the database procedure and provide an admin with a rich text editor to fill out the defined field (email title, body, when to send, etc)

It could be done in a day or two... Just my 2 cents

[C:\Saw]

Always one for the GNU solutions

http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/

just a suggestion

+ postfix

http://www.postfix.org/start.html

[C:\Saw]

another idea:

http://drupal.org/project/mailserver