Email sender

Simple command line tool to automate sending repetitive template based emails to set of users.

Uses Handlebars as a template engine to produce emails to be sent.

Source data from CSV file.

Usage

  node send_mail.js --template=<handlebar-template-file> --data=<csv-file-with-data>

Description

Sometimes there is a need to communicate with large pool of users regarding same subject. E.g. ask customers to provide feedback about particular feature etc.

There are few options to deal with this task: send email manually via web interface or use some existing email marketing tools like http://mailchimp.com/ or http://www.dotmailer.com/

This little tool provide simple alternative. It allows to compile CSV file with data for each recipient and feed it into handlebar template.

Example

Lets assume we have such template for email we want to send:

template/basic_email.hbs

Email regarding {{application_name}}
=====
Hello {{name}},

We are glad to see you as our customer.

Feel free to contact us via {{contact_email}}

Thanks
{{signature_name}}

To define the values for placeholders we would need to have following CSV file (data/users.csv):

application_name, email, name, contact_email, signature_name
TimeOff.Management,[email protected],Pavel,[email protected],PavloV
TimeOff.Management,[email protected],BOT,[email protected],Pavlo

To send emails one needs to run following command:

node send_mail.js --template="template/basic_email.hbs" --data="data/users.csv"

Notes

• Email template has to sections: subject and body. The delimiter between then is a line "=====", make sure that it has exactly 5 "=" characters and no leading/trailing spaces.

• For every placeholder in template there should be a column in a CSV file that is going to be used in a conjunction.

• CSV file must have a column "email" with email address of the user

Configuration

Prior using make sure that configuration file points to correct SMTP server. Please check config.json