This post only applies to Legacy Version 3 of the API
Since conversions are in many cases the purpose for sending an email, they have been covered in great depth in previous posts. You may to start with the basics of conversion tracking and how to set it up by John Gunther. Also, as Adam Covati recently wrote, a conversion doesn’t necessarily just mean a purchase.
Don’t get me wrong, the Bronto reporting tools are great! That said, rather than cover the what and how behind setting up conversion tracking and the reports in the Bronto application, let’s look into how we can use the API to create a custom reporting app or mash-up that gives you exactly what you want, how you want it, when you want it.
Whiz-Bang
So we don’t know how to get the conversion data yet. First, let’s determine what we’re going to get, in order to see what we could possibly build with it. Ultimately, at the individual contact or delivery level, we’ll be able to retrieve the IP, URL, type, description, revenue, and time created for a conversion. You can group by URL or revenue amount, or add an IP locator to track from where in the world you get the most conversions. Hopefully there will be lots and lots of data, because that means your contacts are clicking through and converting.
Tools Of The Trade
If you’re already using the API to do some contact management or some other custom reporting, then you have most likely already used the functions related to contacts and deliveries, namely readContacts and readDeliveries. In order to get to the conversion data, we’ll need to reference either a contact or a delivery by ID. Both of these functions return the IDs for their respective objects. Note: all of the object IDs remain static, so if you have a particular contact or delivery you are watching, there is no need to re-read the object to retrieve the ID.
The only other functions we’ll need are readStreams and readStreamViews. For each object in which you are interested(a contact or a delivery) you need to first call the readStreams function to retrieve the click stream instances. Then for each of these, you will need to call the readStreamViews function with that particular stream ID. Something to consider – each time you call the readStreams function for a deliveryId you will get all of the click streams, not just the new ones since the last time you called the function.
If You Write It They Will Come
Small automatically run applications or scripts are great at getting data and transforming it into a customized format, so you don’t have to do any of the work manually. As we have seen, the API has the necessary functions to get at all of that great conversion data that you see in the Bronto application. Why not take advantage of it and create your own report-wizard-gizmo-script-gadget-formatter-application? Let us know how you’re using the data(and what you named it!)
Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto
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