Action Mailer is a framework for designing email service layers. These layers are used to consolidate code for sending out forgotten passwords, welcome wishes on signup, invoices for billing, and any other use case that requires a written notification to either a person or another system.
AM can be used with a various services to send email through your app.
- Mandrill by MailChimp (my favorite)
- Postmark
- Mailgun
- Amazon SES
- Google Apps
- and more
If you do not want to use ActionMailer, here are RubyGems for each service:
Mandrill:
http://rubygems.org/gems/mandrill-api http://help.mandrill.com/entries/23257181-Using-the-Mandrill-Ruby-Gem
Postmark:
https://github.com/wildbit/postmark-gem
Amazon:
http://rubygems.org/gems/aws-sdk-core http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforruby/
Mailgun:
http://documentation.mailgun.com/wrappers.html http://rubygems.org/gems/mailgun
Google Apps:
https://developers.google.com/search/results?q=email
Because of Google's nature of using their own tech, you should do a search for your apps specific needs.
- DO have an email that is branded for your application and business.
- DO use an email that can be responded to by a human.
- Often times subscribers to your email messages will reply to the email they received. If no one monitor's that address, then your message can be marked as SPAM.
- DO always have an unsubscribe link and process for email
- Reasons why:
- CAN/SPAM laws **
- Don’t use false or misleading header information.
- Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
- Identify the message as an ad.
- Tell recipients where you’re located.
- Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you.
- Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message.
- Monitor what others are doing on your behalf.
** Did you know that CAN/SPAM means: Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003 ** Do use an Email Sending Provider for email newsletters.
More info can be found here:
http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
DO NOT use a free email address for your business communications
- No one will take you seriously.
- It goes against your domain name & brand.
- Don't buy or sell email lists
- Break CAN/SPAM laws
When in doubt, seek out the assistance of a professional email marketer. I know a couple.
We are using the Mandrill rubygem to collect a username and email address and then send that information over to MailChimp to add to the email newsletter list (if the subscriber wants to join). David Groulx is crafting this process while I will be working on developing email templates that will be used by both MailChimp and Mandrill.
For more information on how to set up an application with ActionMailer, visit: http://railsapps.github.io/