DAP allows you to import users in bulk from an external system or database.

Pre-requisites for Importing Users

1) You must have already created the Product into which the users will be imported

2) The user list has to be in a CSV (comma separated) format (one user per line), with the exact format being:

Email,FirstName,LastName

LastName is optional. So your user list could have just

Email,FirstName

Example:

Joe@example.com,Joe,Customer
Jill@anothersite.com,Jill
Bob@another.com,Bob,Member

How to do the actual import

1. Go to Users > Add > “Bulk-Add Multiple Users To A Product”

2. Paste your CSV list into the large text area

3. Select the Product into which you want to import the users

4. Check the “Mark Users as Paid” checkbox if you want them to have “Paid” access to the content (just as if they are actual paying members). If you don’t check it, they will all have access as a “Free” user (instead of a “Paid” user), which means they will only have access to content within the Product that you have marked as “Free”.

5. Click on the “Bulk Add Users” button.

That will first save this entire list as a CSV file in your /dap/admin/bulk folder on your site.

And then, the next time the Hourly cron (dap-cron.php) runs, it will add them one by one to the product, and send them emails as per your Product set up.

So if your Product has the “Thankyou-Email” subject and body filled out, it will individually send out each of the users that thankyou email.

The Basics Of Sending Email Through Your Web Site

DAP is not an email service (like, say, Aweber).

DAP is just a script – a tool, like Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server.

It is your web host’s mail server that actually sends out the email to the recipient. So once DAP sends out the email, it has no control over what happens next.

It’s just like when you put your (regular mail) letter in the mailbox (post box). It is then up to the Postal Service to actually pick up your letter, and deliver to the destination address.

So if the emails that DAP sends out don’t get delivered to your recipients, there could be more than one reason for that.

Server Blacklisting

If your inexpensive (read as cheap shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them knowingly sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that server in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer.

So your emails get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether.

Hourly Email-Sending Limits

Almost all shared hosts have hourly email sending limits. For example, DreamHost has an outgoing limit of 300 emails per hour. Which means, a total of only 300 emails can be sent out per hour through any web site hosted on DreamHost. All of the following count towards the 300 limit:

• Emails sent by any scripts on your site – like DAP
• Your WordPress blog notification emails
• Your WordPress admin emails,
• WP forgot password emails,
• WP comment notification emails,
• Forum notification emails,
• Forum emails sent to each other by your users,
• Forum-software Admin notification emails,
• Support software user and admin notification emails
• Tell-a-friend emails
• Viral-inviter type emails
• Emails sent through Outlook or Thunderbird where you have set the outgoing SMTP server to be your web site’s SMTP server
• Emails sent by others using the same SMTP server to send out emails-  like your business partners, employees, etc
• DAP User welcome emails, Payment notification emails, Forgot password emails, Autoresponder emails, Broadcast emails, etc

So do you see how quickly you can go over that hourly limit of 300 emails per hour?

But here comes the worst part

Once you go over that limit, any emails that are actually sent by you or the scripts running on your site, will not actually result in any kind of error. The mail server will respond by saying that the email(s) has been sent successfully, but in reality, on the backend, it quietly “snuffs out” the email. Which means, it doesn’t go anywhere – just gets sent to a “blackhole”. So you keep thinking that you sent out the email. DAP keeps thinking it has sent out the email. But in reality, the emails never actually get sent.

This is the same as you actually putting your letter into the mailbox at the Post Office. But then, imagine this: The postal worker who comes to pick up your mail, quietly goes to the back of the post office and dumps it all into one giant trash can, and destroys all of the mail. So you’re thinking you actually mailed out that important check to pay your utility bill. But the utility company never gets your check, and they slam you with a late fee.

Possible Solutions

1) DAP + Aweber (most expensive, most reliable)

2) DAP + 3rd party SMTP service provider (Fusemail.com or SMTP.com) (less expensive than Aweber, slightly less reliable too)

3) DAP + Good web host (cheapest, can have mixed results – all depends on your host).

You could always use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or SMTP.com to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system. This is probably the next best thing to using a service like Aweber.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a good web host. We ourselves use just DAP and Dreamhost’s email servers to send out emails to all of our users.

And DAP also has built-in job queues to schedule outgoing emails while also making sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (dreamhost’s limit is 300 emails/hour, I think). We use multiple SMTP servers from our own other web sites, all combined to be able to send a few thousand emails per hour.

But even with a lot of planning, it is easy to go over the hourly limit.

So the next time you see in your Job Queue that emails were sent out successfully, but the recipient never received it, here are some things to check:

1) It landed in your recipient’s junk/spam folder. Ask them to whitelist or add your email address to their contacts list.

2) You have overshot the limit, so you would have to actually send out the email again.

3) Try to send out broadcasts during a low-traffic time – say like later in the night – when you’re not actively sending out emails, and using up precious email counts from that hourly quota.

(Or… “DAP vs MailChimp”, “DAP vs. GetResponse”, …. “DAP vs 3rd-Party-List-Service”)

We often get asked why use Aweber (or other third-party list service) when DAP itself is an autoresponder.

So here’s a brief overview of when and why it makes sense to use DAP or Aweber.

Why Aweber

DAP is not an email service like Aweber.

DAP is just a tool – like Outlook or Thunderbird – that simply sends out email using your web host’s email server.

If your inexpensive shared web host is hosting a large number of sites on one server, and one of them sends out spam (or mistakenly gets flagged for spam), that will put the email deliverability of every web site on that servver, in jeopardy, because your site now shares the same IP address as that of an “alleged” spammer.

So your emails get sent to junk/spam folder by Gmail and Yahoo. Or worse, they just totally disappear into the ether.

Your customers never get your email. Your campaign suffers. Your conversion plunges.

This won’t happen with Aweber.

Aweber (and other premier email service providers) have staff on hand, spend a lot of time, money and resources dealing with regular ISP’s (like AOL and SBC) to make sure their lists – and their reputation – remain clean.

Which is probably why they shut down large lists without much of a warning to you, and do other similar crazy stuff. I guess it works for them – and the other Aweber users, because when you send out an email through your Aweber list, it almost always gets there in your recipient’s inbox.

Which is very cool. Which is why they also charge so much for their service.

But if you can’t afford their high fees, then you can of course use DAP’s built-in email autoresponder, whose deliverability is only as good as your host’s spam reputation

Of course, you can always use DAP and external SMTP service provider like Fusemail.com or SMTP.com to send out bulk mail through DAP while totally bypassing your web host’s email system. This is probably the next best thing to using Aweber only.

And if you can’t afford even that, then simply use DAP on a good web host. We ourselves use just DAP and Dreamhost’s email servers to send out emails to all of our users. And DAP also has built-in job queues to schedule outgoing emails while also making sure that you don’t exceed your web host’s hourly email sending limits (dreamhost’s limit is 300 emails/hour, I think). We use multiple SMTP servers from our own other web sites, all combined to be able to send a few thousand emails per hour.

So given a choice, here are your email options in the exact order listed.

1) DAP + Aweber: Match made in heaven

2) DAP + 3rd Party List Services: 2nd best option

3) DAP + Your Web Host: Very usable and workable option as long as you are hosting with a decent host.

Feel free to comment below if you have any questions.

So you have an email list on a 3rd party autoresponder service – like Aweber or GetResponse.

And you want everyone who joins your DAP-powered membership site, to also be automatically added to this 3rd party list, so that you can use the 3rd party service to send out autoresponder emails (instead of, or in conjunction with, DAP).

Now if your 3rd party autoresponder service provide a “subscribable” email address (like, yourlist@autoresponder.com), then all you have to do to add all DAP members to this list, is to put the above email address (yourlist@autoresponder.com) into the “3rd Party Email Notification” field on the “Products” page in DAP.

For example, click here to see how DAP can automatically add members to your Aweber list.

But some 3rd party autoresponder services – like GetResponse, say – don’t allow you to use this subscribable email address (like, yourlist@autoresponder.com) to automate the adding of new members to the list. And they also don’t have an API, that scripts like DAP can use to seamlessly add members directly on the backend.

This is where this feature of DAP comes in handy.

In the documentation below, when we say 3rdPartyForm, we are referring to the sign-up form HTML provided by your 3rd party autoresponder service (like GetResponse) that will allow someone to enter their name and email id in the form and join the list. And when we say autoresponder, we are referring to your 3rd party list service.

At a high level, here’s how this integration works…

1) You first publish this 3rdPartyForm (that has your autoresponder id and other details) to a special php page within DAP (explained below)

2) Buyer buys your product from your web site’s sales page, DAP automatically creates an account, and sends buyer the “Activation” (double-optin) email. (Note: You must set your DAP Product to be double-optin in order for this to work).

3) Buyer gets double-optin email from DAP, that says something to the effect of: “You must click on the activation link below activate your membership account and get access to the product you have just purchased”. (Note: You can customize the double-optin email text on the “Products” page).

4) When buyer clicks on the DAP “Activation” link, she is first presented with your 3rdPartyForm. This form will be already pre-filled with her name and email address, and also disabled (name and email cannot be edited)

5) Upon clicking the submit button on this 3rdPartyForm, she is first added to your autoresponder, and then her DAP account is activated.

Now here’s how you set up the 3rdPartyForm…

1. Download this zip file, and unzip the php file inside – it’s called 3rdPartyForm.php. This is just a sample file. This file will have a different name by the time you use it.

2. Open this file with a text editor. Paste your 3rdPartyForm HTML that you have gotten from your autoresponder service.

3. Your 3rdPartyForm will have a field to redirect the user to a “success” page after the user has been successfully added to the 3rd party list. It will be a field named something like “redirect”.

This is how the form field looks in Aweber’s signup forms:

<input type=”hidden” name=”redirect” value=”<?php echo Dap_Config::get(“SITE_URL_DAP”); ?>/dap/activate.php?c=<?php echo $c; ?>&p=<?php echo $p; ?>“>

Now your autoresponder service might call it “redirect”, “success_url” or something similar. Just make sure whatever the field name is, the “value” of this field is exactly the same as shown below:

Do not change the special PHP code in the value field. Only change the name of the field (redirect, in the above example) if required.

3. Now go to the DAP product whose members you want to add to your autoresponder. From the Product page, get the “Product Id” field (shown right above “Product Name”). It is a number – like “1″ or “2″ or “10″. Make a note of this Product Id.

4. Now rename the 3rdPartyForm.php to <ProductId>.php . So if the Product Id from Step 3 above was 1, then name this file as 1.php. If it was 10, then name the file as 10.php.

5. Upload this 1.php (or 10.php) file directly to the folder “/dap/inc/“.

That’s it!

Just make sure the Product for which you are doing this, has double-optin enabled – which means put some text in the Double-Optin Subject and Double-Optin Body of that product.

Try adding a new user to that product, and you should see the 3rdPartyForm being presented first when the user clicks on the activation link. And only upon the submitting of this form, the user is activated in DAP.