​Some Mapp clients use an external application that automatically generates many individual, highly personalised emails stored in mbox format. Mapp Engage imports and processes mbox files, sending out all of the emails contained therein. There is no need to alter the mbox file for sendout with Mapp Engage. Customers who upload and process their mbox files in Mapp Engage take advantage of Mapp Engage's sendout capabilities, deliverability features, group settings, basic reporting functionality and more.


Mapp Engage was designed for mass sendouts of HTML/text messages, not for processing mbox files containing many individual, personalised emails. As a result, when importing and processing mbox files with Mapp Engage, some other Mapp Engage functionalities are not available or only available in a limited way. 

At the moment, Mapp Engage can only process mbox files stored on an FTP server.

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Sending mbox Emails with Mapp Engage​

Sendout of email messages stored in an mbox file is performed with a time-based automation.

The steps for sendout of an mbox file in Mapp Engage are as follows:


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  1. The mbox file is uploaded to the FTP server.
  2. The user creates or selects a Mapp Engage group in which the sendout will take place.
  3. The user creates a time-based automation ​Import and Process mbox File​ (see ​Import and Process mbox File​).
  4. At the scheduled time, the mbox file is imported and processed by Mapp Engage. Import and processing occur simultaneously. Mapp Engage sends the emails contained in the mbox file to the addresses in the file. Any email addresses contained in the mbox file that do not already exist in the Mapp Engage group are added to the group at this time.
  5. A report regarding the import and sendout is sent to the user via email.
  6. The finished mbox processing can be used as an event to trigger further event-based automations. For more information, see ​Mbox File Processing Finished (S)​.

For detailed instructions regarding the import and sendout of mbox files with Mapp Engage, see the Procedure guide ​Send mbox Emails​.

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Limitations of mbox​

With Mapp Engage's mbox sendout functionality, mbox files containing a large number of personalised emails can be sent via Mapp Engage. However, Mapp Engage was designed for mass sendouts of HTML/text messages, not for processing mbox files containing many individual, personalised emails. As a result, when importing and processing mbox files with Mapp Engage, some other Mapp Engage functionalities are not available or only available in a limited way.

When importing and processing mbox files, Mapp Engage basically "streams" the file through its servers. Mapp Engage does not store any of the email content. That means that no copy of the email content is available in Mapp Engage after sendout. This also affects functionality such as personalisation placeholders. Furthermore, each individual email in the file is treated as a personalised email in the system.

When importing and sending mbox files, normal Mapp Engage functionality in the following areas is affected:

Personalisation Placeholders

Mbox files cannot contain personalisation placeholders. This is because Mapp Engage does not adapt the emails in the mbox file while processing them.

Link Tracking

All links in mbox files are treated as "individual links" by Mapp Engage. This means that for Mapp Engage to track these links, individual link tracking must be enabled in the group settings. For more information, see ​Tracking & Links (Tab)​.

To enable link tracking for mbox messages, it is necessary to enable individual link tracking in the group: in the ​Tracking & Links (tab)​, select ​Individual Link Tracking​.

Image Handling

There is no possibility to create a "read online" link in an email in mbox format, because Mapp Engage does not store any of the email contents in its system.

Images in the emails cannot be hosted by Mapp Engage.

Address Handling

When an mbox file is imported, Mapp Engage sends all emails contained in the file without checking the addresses against once another. Mapp Engage therefore cannot prevent the sendout of duplicate emails to the same address.

Mapp Engage is also not involved in the opt-in process for the email address imported via mbox file. No double opt-in process is available with mbox.

Reporting

All emails sent via mbox are considered ​single messages​ in Mapp Engage. The reporting and statistics features are therefore limited to those available for single messages. In detail, this means:

  • There is no visual reporting available for mbox emails, because Mapp Engage does not store any of the email contents in its system.
  • Potential inaccuracies in reporting click and opening rates, because the same email address can exist twice in one mbox file.
  • No "group“ export of data.
  • Use of a prepared message as a "container" for the mbox email sendout enables you to define the internal message name and to use only one message ID for all emails in the mbox file. Thus, all of the emails in the mbox file are grouped together in the statistics. If a prepared message is NOT used, a prepared message and message ID are automatically created by the Mapp Engage system for each of the emails in the mbox. In that case each of the emails receives an individual ID and is individually analysed in the statistics. The automatically generated message name has the following format: mboxPlaceholder--messageID (e.g. mboxPlaceholder-1343052167341).

The name given to the prepared message is NOT displayed as the subject line in the sent email. The subject line of the email is taken from the mbox file directly.


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What is mbox?​

mbox is a file format for storing email messages. Many email messages are stored in one single mbox file.

Many email clients use mbox as their archive file format. Also, some applications that send many individual email messages may generate and store email messages in mbox files. mbox is NOT a file transport protocol, such as SMTP, HTTP, or FTP.

In an mbox file, the emails are stored in plain text. Each single email message in the mbox file starts with From (the from line of the email) and an empty space, and ends with a blank line. Each email contains the ​from address​, ​return path email address​, ​recipient address​, ​from and to lines​, and the ​content of the email​.

The domain used for the from address must be a domain that is registered with Mapp for your Mapp Engage system. If you attempt to use an mbox file to send messages from any other domain name, these messages will be skipped and will not be sent by the system.

A single email in an mbox file has the following format:

From joeylee@supermail.com Sat Jan 3 01:05:34 2011

Return-Path: <joeylee@supermail.com>
Delivered-To: molly_miller@fastmail.com
Date: 3 Jan 2011 01:05:34 -0000
From: Joey Lee <joeylee@supermail.com>
To: molly_miller@fastmail.com (Molly Miller)
Hi Joey,Would you like to get ice cream with me after school?