Secure PHP Development- P108 ppt

To achieve such goals, a company needs an effective e-mail campaign e-campaign tool.. It must have the following features: ◆ Live database list management: Allows the company to create m

Security Considerations

This survey system by default does not offer any control on who can run the survey applications However, that does not mean you cannot easily change the authoriza-tion process in each applicaauthoriza-tion to fit your security needs For example, say you would like to limit access to survey_form_mngr.php, survey_exec_mngr.php, survey_list_mngr.php, and survey_mngr.phpto a limited set of IP addresses In such case you would need to replace the given authorize()method (shown below)

to handle IP restrictions

function authorize() {

return TRUE;

} For example, say that you want to control access to this application such that only 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.5 IP addresses are allowed to run them In such case you can change the authorization method to be:

function authorize() {

$safeIPs = array(‘192.168.1.1’,

‘192.168.1.2’,

‘192.168.1.3’,

‘192.168.1.4’,

‘192.168.1.5’);

return (in_array($_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’], $safeIPs,) ? TRUE: FALSE;

}

By replacing the default authorize()method in these applications with the new one, you have customized the applications with your site’s security needs

Summary

In this chapter you learned to design an email based survey system that sends HTML forms to target email lists and collects responses in the database This creates

an effective tool for small- to medium-scale surveys that can be done quickly and quite easily via the Web interface

506 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions

Chapter 15

E-campaign System

IN THIS CHAPTER

◆ Architecting an e-campaign system

◆ Designing e-campaign classes

◆ Creating a list manager application

◆ Creating a URL manager application

◆ Creating a message manager application

◆ Creating a campaign manager application

◆ Creating a URL tracking and redirection application

◆ Creating a unsubscription tracking application

◆ Creating a campaign reporting application

W HEN COMMUNICATING WITH LARGEgroups of professionals, friends, or customers, e-mail is a very effective medium E-mail campaigns are frequently used to com-municate with groups of people An company can remain in close contacts with its customers via e-mail by frequently engaging the customer in providing electronic feedback, informing the customer about new products and services, and providing valuable complementary and socially responsible information A company that interacts with its existing customer base using e-mail can reduce marketing cost by effectively turning existing customers into repeat customers To achieve such goals,

a company needs an effective e-mail campaign (e-campaign) tool In this chapter,

I discuss the features, design, and implementation of such a tool

First, let’s look at the feature set for an effective e-campaign system

Features of an E-campaign System

An effective e-campaign system allows a company to communicate with groups of customers with ease It must have the following features:

◆ Live database list management: Allows the company to create mailing

lists from existing customer databases The list management capability should be such that the customer database need not be copied or exported 507

into external files or other databases before use This is very important because a customer database is typically the repository of other business-specific applications, which are responsible for adding, modifying, and removing customers If the e-campaign system requires that customer data

be exported, then there is always the issue of being out of sync with the customer database over time and, therefore, it would create a great deal

of work for the database administrator This is why an ideal e-campaign system directly accesses a live customer database in a read-only manner

to retrieve customer information needed for e-mail campaigns This ensures that the ever-growing customer database is always used in future campaigns

◆ Effective message management: Messages must be personalized and rich

in content formatting Because HTML messages are most appealing when the appropriate amount of care is used in designing the look and feel of the message, the e-campaign tool must support HTML messages Each message must be trackable

◆ Personalization: Each message should be personalized using customer

data available in a customer database located anyone within the company

◆ Easy campaign execution: E-campaign execution should be so simple

that it doesn’t require programming or the help of the IS department Marketing personnel can execute e-campaigns via a Web interface

◆ Duplication-free campaigns: Each campaign must be automatically free

from duplicate e-mails When sending an e-campaign to customers, it’s vital that the same customer is never sent the same message more then once in the same campaign If a customer exists in a database multiple times because she bought two or more products, she should not receive the same message multiple times Customers will get extremely disappointed

or annoyed if their mailboxes are flooded with the same message from the same campaign They’re likely to consider the company unprofessional and take their business to a competitor Therefore, it is essential that an e-campaign system never sends duplicate e-mails for any campaign

◆ Automatic unsubscription filtering: An e-campaign system must

auto-matically filter out the previously unsubscribed recipients before sending

a new campaign to the same list This is not only vital for maintaining responsible, professional business image for a company but also likely to

be a legal requirement in many parts of the world

◆ Click-through and unsubscription tracking: A good e-campaign system

must be able to track click-through and unsubscription requests Such tracking ability is the most important aspect of the e-campaign system Being able to track the click-through can be very important in under-standing customer interests Tracking unsubscription requests is a must,

508 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions

because if someone does not want to receive the type of campaign you’re sending to her, it’s important to remove her from future campaigns of a similar type In many parts of the world, unsubscription tracking is a legal requirement of e-mail communication

◆ Easy report generation: A good e-campaign system must produce a

report of each campaign such that the company personnel can access it quickly and without needing programming or database expertise

Architecting an E-campaign System

Figure 15-1 shows the system diagram of the e-campaign system that you will develop in this chapter

Figure 15-1: A system diagram of an e-campaign system.

The system has two types of users: the e-campaign administrator and e-mail recipients who are the customers An e-campaign administrator can manage lists, URLs, messages, campaigns, and reports The end-user receives campaign-executed campaign messages and interacts by clicking on trackable URLs or unsubscribing from future campaigns via unsubscription links

To implement these functionalities the system requires a set of objects: list, URLs, messages, campaigns, URL tracks, unsubscription tracks, and reports These objects are stored in a system database with the exception that list data is stored in existing databases within the company

E-Campaign Administrator

Email Recipient (Customer)

List Manager

URL Manager

Campaign Manager Message Manager

Report Manager

List

Message

URL Campaign

Report

URL Tracker Unsubscription Track

Execution Manager

URL Tracker

Unsubscription Tracker

Any Customer Database

E-campaign Database

For example, a company with this e-campaign system can have its customer databases in multiple database hosts and e-campaign system on a different database server In such a case, the list objects point to data stored in customer databases in other database hosts throughout the company This is a very powerful feature because customer data need to be exported and loaded in the e-campaign system via any manual or scheduled synchronization glue logic

When the customer executes a campaign, the appropriate customer data is tem-porarily copied to the e-campaign system and removed after the execution During the execution, each message is personalized if the standard tag fields shown in Table 15-1 are mapped to data fields in the customer table

T ABLE 15-1 STANDARD PERSONALIZATION TAG FIELDS

Standard Personalization

{REC_ID} Record ID This is a required field, which should be mapped

to the numeric record ID field in the customer database

{FIRST} First name This field should be mapped to the first name

field in the customer database (if any)

{LAST} Last name This field should be mapped to the last name

field in the customer database (if any)

{AGE} Age This field should be mapped to the age field in the

customer database (if any)

{INCOME} Income This field should be mapped to the income field in

the customer database (if any)

{SEX} Gender This field should be mapped to the gender (sex)

field in the customer database (if any)

Also during the execution, each trackable URL tag within a message is replaced with a redirection link that can track and redirect the user via the URL tracking and redirection application The unsubscription tag, {UNSUB}, is replaced with an unsub-scription link

When the end-user clicks on a URL, she is tracked and redirected The tracking data is stored in the e-campaign database Similarly, if she unsubscribes, the request is stored in the e-campaign database for future exclusion of her e-mail from

a list in any campaign

510 Part III: Developing E-mail Solutions