Slow email process

I have a vb class named systemalerts as below. The email process works it just takes way too long, about 8 to 10 seconds for an email to process. A lifetime for todays users. I use a vendor product UltimateEmail to process and merge the email fields. Just wanted someone that knows more than me to see if any of my code could be slowing the process. If I hard code an donid into the sproc it takes less than a second to complete, so I think it's my code. Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic Imports System.Data Imports System.Data.SqlClient Imports Karamasoft.WebControls.UltimateEmail Public Class SystemAlerts Public Shared Sub SendAlert(ByVal intDon_ID As Int32) Dim mailMerge As New MailMerge mailMerge.IsBodyHtml = True Dim Row As DataRow Dim DS As New DataSet Dim dt As DataTable Dim ConnectStr As String = _ ...