Patent ID: 8316090

Claim:
A first computer comprising a processor and a memory, the memory comprising instructions, executable by the processor, for: receiving, at the first computer, a human-readable message over a network or the Internet from a second computer, wherein the human-readable message is in the form of an e-mail; determining, at the first computer, whether that human-readable message includes (i) a tag originated by a sender of the human-readable message that is associated with the second computer, wherein the tag identifies the human-readable message as a message that is to be pre-processed prior to forwarding by the first computer to a plurality of recipients and (ii) human-readable instructions, originated by the sender of the human-readable message that is associated with the second computer, wherein the human-readable instructions are interpretable by the first computer to direct that first computer to pre-process the human-readable message by a pre-process routine, the pre-process routine including instructions for: requesting and receiving, over a network or the Internet from a third computer, data from one or more data fields of a database responsive to the human-readable instructions and without human intervention, that data from those one or more data fields each being associated with said plurality of recipients of that human-readable message; modifying that human-readable message, responsive to the human-readable instructions and without human intervention, to include human-readable versions of that data from those one or more data fields thereby creating a plurality of processed human-readable messages; and forwarding the plurality of processed human-readable messages over a network or the Internet to a plurality of fourth computers, each fourth computer in the plurality of fourth computers associated with at least one recipient in the plurality of recipients; wherein one or more of those human-readable instructions is interpretable by the first computer to direct the first computer to conditionally conduct a change in flow of control by those human-readable instructions, in response to a comparison, by the first computer, of a value of that data from those one or more data fields with one or more human-readable data values in that human-readable message, thereby causing each of the plurality of human-readable messages to have different data from the database that is uniquely associated with a respective recipient in the plurality of recipients; and when it is determined that the human-readable message includes (i) a tag and (ii) human-readable instructions, pre-processing the human-readable message in accordance with the human-readable instructions using the pre-process routine.