[ATS16805]

My goal is to arrive at a few powerful features for mail list management. We maintain our contacts in an SQL database. I'm picturing a web form that would allow me to access the e-mail addresses in the db for the purpose of sending mass mail newsletters.

I also want to enable an opt-in / opt-out function for users who would like to subscribe (or unsubscribe) to our newsletter. The difficulty, as i perceive it, is that I need to be able to mail to both our existing contact list, and anyone who simply subscribed to the opt-in list. in some cases, this might be the same contact, but i expect that i will end up w/ contacts who are ONLY in the opt-in list, and separate contacts who are ONLY in our existing customer contact list.

Maybe it will be best for me to send two newsletters-- one which will query the exisiting contacts, and one to select from the opt-in list that i will establish. but, if there is a way to combine it so that both table elements are included in the same outgoing mail, i'd be delighted. however, as an inexperienced ASP.NET coder, i will need this to be as elementary as possible.

in summary, i need the following

• opt-in / opt-out via web form - data to be stored in SQL db
• send mail to that list of opt-in contacts - query the db for the mail recipients
• manage both existing contacts, and opt-in contacts seperately

if i haven't expressed my needs effectively, please ask me to clarify. thanks for your help!

[talkprogrammingtalk]

Why dont you simply use DTS, doing this type of thing fairly regularly, should be real easy to do. The you can either execute the package when you want or create a simple web, vb, whatever frontend to fire it. Id proably use DTS for this either way, best way for this type of thing.