[Forum] How to eliminate large quantity of user bad email addresses?

[numberone]

I have run a fairly large board for a number of years. As a result, I have about 1,000 emails addresses of registered users that are no longer valid. vBulletin sends the routine emails to those addresses and they bounce back as failed. What is the most efficient way for me to stop emails from going to those bad addresses. How do I collect those and how do I stop emails from being sent. It would be nice if there was an efficient way to do this...any ideas?

[oddmud]

This is an old message, I've been searching but I want this same answer.

[Hartmut]

One way would be to code a product for such an option (vBulletin does noch have it on board). Every user receives a mail with a kind of reaction link. If the link doesnt get klicked, than the cronjob deletes the user after x days of no reaction. Or something like that... A request on vbulletin.org could help.

[oddmud]

One way would be to code a product for such an option (vBulletin does noch have it on board). Every user receives a mail with a kind of reaction link. If the link doesnt get klicked, than the cronjob deletes the user after x days of no reaction. Or something like that... A request on vbulletin.org could help.

Ok, well I thought that a forum software would have something like this built in. It would be a smart idea, who wants a forum with thousands of dead email accounts?

[David Copeland]

I have run a fairly large board for a number of years. As a result, I have about 1,000 emails addresses of registered users that are no longer valid. vBulletin sends the routine emails to those addresses and they bounce back as failed. What is the most efficient way for me to stop emails from going to those bad addresses. How do I collect those and how do I stop emails from being sent. It would be nice if there was an efficient way to do this...any ideas?

Our forum has over 42,000 members. We have each member assigned to one of several User Groups, instead of having all members assigned to the standard User Group titled "Registered".

When we get a new member, instead of them being assigned to "Registered", we have named that group as "Lev 1a", which means they have Level 1 access at no cost.

Our members can choose three higher levels of access, such as Lev 2, Lev 3, and Lev 4.

We mass email separate emails to each group with a promotion or announcement that fits their Level.

When we get five (5) bounces from Lev 1's, we change their User Group to Lev 1B (which the "B" means Bounce). If we get a bounce from a paid member who has Lev 4, we change it to Lev 4B, but we call them to get their new email address because they are a paying member.

In the end, there will always be bounces. When we first started out cleaning up our bounced emails, we were getting 1000 bounces quite often. But after we got smart and changed the User Group to a "B" group, then our bounces started dropping.

When bounces come in for a member we are no longer emailing (because their Group in the B Group), it is because they have subscribed to some threads, which also send emails out. We simply access their account through the Admin, and DELETE ALL SUBSCRIPTIONS.

These days we might get a bounce a week because we stay on top of it.

We also KEEP the old accounts and emails, so that we have their record when they resurface and join again. Because we have a very unique registration form which asks for special identifying items, and because most of our members pay us an annual amount for Level 4 access, we have much more personal information on hand so that we can MERGE the old account with the member's NEW ACCOUNT when they return.