Hi, I would like to be able to send a string of emails at a determined interval to different recipients.
I assign to each Contact this series of Emails called a Campaign, where Campaign has Email1, Email2, etc. Each Contact has a Contact.start_date. Each Email has email.days which stores the number of days since a Contact's start-date to send the email.
For example: Email1.days=5, Email2.days=7, Email3.days=11.
Contact1.start_date = 4/10/2010; contact2.start_date = 4/08/2010
IF today is 4/15, then Contact1 receives Email 1 (4/15-4/10 = 5 days) IF today is 4/15, then Contact2 received Email 2 (4/15 - 4/8 = 7 days).
What's a good action to run every day using a cron job that would then follow these rules to send out emails using ActionMailer?
NOTE: The question isn't about using ActionMailer. It is about doing the "math" as well as the execution. Which email to send to whom? I am guessing it has to do with some version of Date - Contact[x].start_date and then compare against email[x].days but I'm not exactly clear how. Thanks.
I'd like guidance on whether to use date.today versus time.now as well.
Note: the intent is that an individual person may need to schedule individual follow-up on a consistent basis. Rather than having to remember when to follow up which email with whom, it would just follow a pre-determined campaign and send for that person.
So it's not a "bulk mail" -- it's really automating the follow-up for individual correspondence.