Brontoversity » Bronto

May I Have Another User

Alex Durzy — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:00:57 +0000

As part of version 4 of the Bronto API, we have added the ability to programatically manage your account. This is especially useful for agency and groups accounts that are bringing new client accounts online and want to minimize the amount of manual intervention. We have already discussed how to add new accounts, but what good is an account without users? Prior to version 4 of the API, you had to login to the Bronto web app in order to view or add users(logins). So let’s take a look at the new functions that allow you to manage your users.

As is standard, we have included create, read, update, and delete functions for logins. We have also made an effort to make the objects that are accessible through the API very closely mirror their web application counterparts. In other words, creating a contact, message, account, login, etc through the API should feel very similar to creating one in the application.

The quickest way to get a sense for an object and its parameters is to read one or more that have already been created. So check out the readLogins function and give it a try with an empty filter. Here’s an example SOAP request/response generated from soapui:









xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx













1

xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx my name my@email.address 1234567890 US false false true false false true false false false true false true true false true true

All of the permissions should look familiar if you have had a chance to edit a user’s permissions in the application. Hence, when you create a login object through the API, you can specify those same permissions. Here is what the SOAP request for the addLogins function looks like.

With these new functions in hand, you will be able to automate the management of your account, whereas previously this was only possible by logging into the Bronto web application. We hope you find them useful and welcome any feedback.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Webforms and Subscriber Confirmation

Brad Gurley — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:55:00 +0000

Back in February, Lucas Weber gave us a great post titled “How To Send A Subscription Confirmation Message.” In that post, Lucas described how to use double opt-in when importing contacts into your Bronto account. For those of you using a webform to bring in your contacts, though, you may have been waiting to find out how to send a confirmation message to these new contacts.

With this post, that wait is over. Today we will outline how you can send confirmations to all contacts added via webforms. For our demonstration, we will be using the new webform interface rolled out with our most recent release.

Prepare Your Message

Before you edit your webform, you will need to create a subscription confirmation message. Creating messages is covered extensively in the online help, and will not be covered in this blog post. Instead, we’ll be focusing on making sure that the message we want to send has a Confirmation URL in it so that our contacts have some way to confirm their subscription.

We actually have a special tag that can be placed on any element in your message, whether it is an image or a simple text link. The special tag you’ll need to use to create a click-able confirmation URL is %%!confirm_url%%. Here is how it would look as part of a text link:

Click here to confirm your subscription

Setting Up Your Webform

Setting up subscription confirmation for a webform can be done from the Form Settings for the desired form. First, make sure that you are editing an Add Contacts form, as subscription confirmation will not work with any other type of form.

While editing the webform, click the Form Settings button in the upper right to access the Settings dialog box. In the dialog window, check the box in the lower left corner marked “Add contacts with a status of Unconfirmed.”

Once you have checked that box, make sure to choose an option in the drop-down menu directly below it labeled “Welcome Message Behavior.” For your double opt-in form, you will want to choose the option “Send a welcome message to new contacts.”

Once you make that choice, you will be given the option to select your welcome message. Make sure to choose the message that you created earlier containing the Subscription Confirmation link, as this link is required to complete the double opt-in process.

Once you’ve made your selections, click the Done button in lower right of the Form Settings dialog box, then click the Save & Close button. Your webform is now set up to use double opt-in!

As always, if you have any questions about Subscription Confirmation, feel free to post in the comments or to open a case from the Support link within your account.

Brad Gurley
Support Associate at Bronto

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Ready, Set, Import.

Alex Durzy — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:52:14 +0000

Did you know there is a way to upload your contacts without logging into the application or using the API? We call it Direct Import.

Direct Import allows you to post (or send) a file over http without having to interact manually with the contact import forms in the Bronto web application. Why is this so great? Well, without having to do any API programming or much of any setup at all, you can create a system that automatically sends a file with your contacts’ email addresses and any additional information you have, to Bronto.

Using a scheduling utility, such as cron on unix based systems, and an http posting library, such as curl, you can setup a scheduled process to keep your contact data fresh. These are tools that are familiar to most system administrators, so you should be up and running relatively quickly.

Do you have the ability to automatically create exports of your contact data from your local database, but have been logging into Bronto to keep your contact data up to date? Let Direct Import take care of that for you. You’ll always have the most up to date information about your contacts and you’ll only have to set it up once.

So, head on over to the help topics in the application for all of the information and setup options that you’ll need. Less manual work, and fresher data. We hope you’ll like it.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Filtering Result Sets, Part 2

Alex Durzy — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:23:04 +0000

Last time we looked at the basics of Filtering Result Sets. This time we’ll look at another great new filtering mechanism that was added to version 4 of the Bronto API. In the past many of these types of filtering operations had to be performed by reading the entire contact database and then filtering locally. In some cases, with a large contact database, this operation could potentially take much longer than desired due to the increased number of back and forth calls over the internet that was required.

If you used the previous version of the API you may have used the filtering that was available. You had the option to check equality(=) for all data types as well as inequalities(>, <, >=, <=) with numeric and date types. In version 4 of the API we have added some very useful filter operators. Let’s take a closer look at a couple of the new operators.

To The Operators Jeeves

StartsWith / EndsWith can be used as a string comparison and are especially useful when trying to filter down your contacts by matching a portion of their email address. For instance, let’s say you wanted to see how engaged contacts with only yahoo.com have been. You could use the EndsWith operator and “yahoo.com” as the value to request just these contacts. Once you have these contacts you can use the aggregated statistics that are returned to create a customized report with just the information that you need.

But Wait, There’s More…

So you actually want all of the contacts except those yahoo.com addresses? You’re in luck, you can change that EndsWith operator to DoesNotEndWith. Why stop there? You can add additional filters to crop that list down even more. You only want contacts that signed up this year? Add a filter using the new SameYearAs operator? Want to get contacts that signed up specifically between two dates? Check out the Before / After and BeforeOrSameDay / AfterOrSameDay.

With this version of the API we have made an effort to open up the filtering to give you more options. As your contact database grows this will be increasingly important to you. Hopefully you will find these additional possibilities helpful. Let us know what you think!

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Filtering Result Sets

Alex Durzy — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:07:32 +0000

Did you know that all of the read functions available in the Bronto API have the option to include a filter based on selected criteria? Do you want to limit the number of results you get from a read request? Do you only need one or a few specific records? Do you only want records that were created between two dates? If you are using or have used version 3 of the API, these concepts will be familiar. For Version 4, we have made filtering even more powerful!

What’s New In Version 4?

Gone is the universal readFilter with its readCriteria attributes. In version 4, each read function has its own filter object with associated named criteria parameters. As with V3, you can still opt to perform the read with an empty filter in order to retrieve all of the available records for that request. In some cases, this may be the desired effect. However, in other cases, filtering the returned results is essential. The objects that you will probably want to filter most are contacts, since this is likely your largest set of objects.

Filtering Contacts

Let’s take a look at the options available in the filter for the readContacts function. On api.bronto.com, you will find the contactFilter object that is one of the parameters of the readContacts (Click here for example code) function. The parameters of the various filter objects correlate to their associated object. All of the parameters you see in the contactFilter object are all in the contact object itself, except for one. That is the type parameter. This parameter takes on the same role as the operator parameter in V3. That is, it allows you to set multiple criteria and join them with an AND or OR operator. We have also added some new operators that allow for more advanced filtering. Take a look at the comparisons that are now available in the filterOperator.

If you want to give it a try without writing any code and don’t yet have a handy SOAP testing tool, see Washing With SOAP. You’ll also want to review Logging into the API v4.0. Once you have done that, you can go ahead and pick out your favorite read function and start trying out some of the different filtering parameters.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Overriding Frequency Caps

Lucas Weber — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:47:23 +0000

One of the features that Bronto provides is the ability to set Frequency Caps on your emails. Frequency Caps limit the amount of email that can be sent to your contacts in a certain period of time. You can set these frequency caps to limit the number of messages sent to each contact on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is a great way to help prevent contact fatigue, which is when contacts unsubscribe simply because they are getting to much email from a particular sender. While Frequency Caps can be a great tool, sometimes you’ve got a message that needs to get to everyone on your list, regardless of whether they have already been sent 5 emails this week. This post will walk you through how to override the frequency caps on a per-message basis to ensure that your important messages are sent to everyone who needs to receive them.

Setting Frequency Caps

Before we look at how to override Frequency Caps, we’ll take a very quick look at where to go to set them up in the first place. By default, Bronto does not enable any Frequency Caps in your account, so they will need to be set up manually. To set up or check Frequency Caps that are currently in place, just go to Home->Settings and then choose General settings from the left sidebar. Your current Frequency Caps settings can be found on this page.

Overriding Frequency Caps

Overriding Frequency Caps is actually very simple, and can be done on regular or automated messages in your account. For regular messages, during the first step of the send process and after you’ve set up your From information and scheduled your message, there will be a link at the bottom of the screen that says Show Advanced Options. Just click the link and the Advanced Options menu will appear. From there, all you have to do is click the checkbox labeled Contact Frequency Caps Override. You can then scroll to the bottom and click Next to move on with the sending process.

For Automated Message Rules, overriding Frequency Caps is even easier. On the second step of creating an Automated Message Rule, there is the Override Frequency Caps checkbox in the Sender Options section right at the top of the page. Just make sure that checkbox is checked and this Automated Message Rule will override any Frequency Caps you have in place.

That is all there is to it. Simply checking the override Frequency Caps checkbox in either of these locations will allow this particular message to bypass any Frequency Caps that may be set on your account.

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

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Previewing Your Dynamic Content

Frank Chapman — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:53:16 +0000

One of the marketing tools that we are most proud of at Bronto is the ability to use dynamic content in your messages. Previously, John Gunther described in depth how to leverage this tool in his post The Logical Way To Send Email: Dynamic Content. I’d like to show you how to test this content in real time inside the Bronto application.

Setting Up Test Contacts

The first action that you will need to take is to create a couple of email addresses that carry the characteristics that you are basing your content on. When you create these contacts, be sure to check the box next to “Use for dynamic preview”. Once you have this checked, make sure that your contact is on the list or has the field information that would qualify it for specific content to be displayed.

Viewing The Previews

Once your message has dynamic code in place, you will want to choose the show preview button from the editing screen to see how your content looks. This view will show up in a pop-up window over your editor. The top of this window will have a drop down box. This box will contain the email addresses of any contact that has dynamic preview enabled. If you choose any of these addresses, you should get a preview of what that contact’s email should look like.

In this example, here is the preview of a message that will go to a list named “Winners”.

Here is the same message as it appears to contacts that reside in the “Losers” list.

It’s important to note that there is also an option in the drop down list for the “Default” view. This is the view that contacts will receive if they do not fit in any of the criteria that you have specified in your dynamic code.

More Dynamic Options

If you feel like you have now become an expert on dynamic content in Bronto, maybe you should read our blog post Cracking The Dynamic Content Code to see how powerful this feature is. Remember to contact support at Bronto if you have any issues or questions.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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Separate Your Way To Success

Alex Durzy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:55:34 +0000

This post only applies to Legacy Version 3 of the API

Would you tow a trailer with a sports car? Would you tighten a bolt with a hammer? Would you eat soup with a knife?

Many of our clients, either by design or due to allocation of resources, have a separation of responsibilities in regards to their email marketing activities. This is especially true when an API integration is involved and the developers handling the integration may or may not also be involved on the marketing side.

The Bronto API is a powerful tool that allows you to control your entire work-flow, from contact management, to message creation, to message sending. From a development standpoint, this is great in that you have all the power in your own hands. While this may suit your needs perfectly, you may also want to ask yourself what parts of your work-flow are best served by your custom integration, and what would make more sense to save for human intervention in the Bronto application. Developers and marketers sometimes view things very differently, so let’s look into a couple of places where you can make some choices to affect how you ultimately end up sending messages.

No Code Changes Required

So your developers have integrated your contact database with Bronto. Messages are being triggered off of various activities on your website. Marketing messages are being sent regularly to the various lists managed by your integration. Transactional messages are being sent with a fury from all the purchasing that is occurring on your site. Unfortunately, the messages look like an old paper plate that someone wrote on. If your developers don’t also double as email marketers and graphic designers, then perhaps you want to pass control of that portion of the process. We talked about how message creation, data population, and sending can be separate activities in Give Them What They Want. Your designers can create a visually appealing emails and your developer’s custom integration can continue to trigger the sending of messages and managing contacts. You shouldn’t have to make any code changes because you want to update the look of a message.

Sending through an API Triggered Automated Message Rule, as we talked about in Owning Automated Messages is another way to not only get great reporting for your triggered deliveries, but to allow more choice for your marketing team. You can turn an AMR on and off, schedule it to expire, control lists of ineligible and eligible contacts, override frequency caps, and control throttling, all without having to make a single code change. Often this type of control is tied into the code that was written by your developers, but Bronto also allows you to make these changes directly from our web application.

Allowing your developers and marketers to do what they do best is one way to get maximum performance from everyone and hopefully yield a successful marketing campaign. Don’t eat soup with a knife. It burns and you’ll probably end up buying a new shirt.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Last Minute Holiday Segments

Rob Slade — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:00:24 +0000

With the Holiday season almost here, I wanted to share a few last minute segment examples you can use to target shoppers on your email lists. Here are some ideas on how to build segments based on different contact scenarios.

Purchased Last Year During The Holidays

The first segment we will look at contains any email contact that purchased from you during the holiday time period last year. In order to create this segment, you will need to store a last purchased date that is specific to this time period in your Bronto fields.

In this segment, we are pulling any contacts that purchased between 11/01/2008 and 12/23/2008. Since we know these contacts purchased during this time last year, they may be inclined to shop with you again this year. Sending them a special email might help trigger another purchase.

Last Minute Holiday Offer

Next we are going to take our previous segment one step further and exclude any contact that has purchased in the last month. This segment can be used for targeting your contacts that purchased last year. You can use this segment to send an extra incentive coupon or discount to earn their business again. The main difference in this segment is that we are making sure that your contacts that have recently purchased are not going to receive the discount after they have already made their purchase. Our primary goal is to reduce the number of upset customers who missed out on the extra savings because they have already purchased prior to your email offer.

We kept the same criteria as we did before, but added in the criteria to exclude anyone that has purchased from you in the last month.

Targeting Contacts With Specific Purchase Amounts

In our last segment example, we are going to specifically target contacts that purchased from you last year, but spent less than a certain dollar amount. In this example we are going after any contact that spent less than $100 during last year’s Holiday season. You can also customize this segment to target consumers that have spent more than a certain amount (perhaps the big spenders you can count on for extra revenue). To build this segment, you will have to have a data field in Bronto that reflects an order value total.

As you can see we are targeting the same group of contacts from the last two segments, but have excluded anyone that spent more than $100 from 11/01/2008 through 12/23/2008.

Of course, these are just a few examples of the near limitless ways you can segment your contacts in Bronto. Hopefully these segments will show you how to create ways to specifically target your contacts. Working with a Bronto Email Marketing Strategists can further help you to maximize your email sends and get the most out of your email marketing dollars.

Rob Slade
Client Support Specialist

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Abandonment Issues? Use Direct Update to Get Over Them!

Lucas Weber — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:31:01 +0000

In my last post, DIY Integrations II: Direct Update, I talked about our Direct Update feature, which allows your to update a contact’s field data based on the pages they visit on your website. Today, I’m going to delve a bit deeper and show an example of how this feature can be used to narrow down your target audience. You’ll learn how to reach out to contacts that have started, but not completed a purchase, and offer them a discount or other incentive. This can be a great way to increase your conversions.

This post will assume that you have an understanding of how Direct Update works and how to implement it on your site. If you have questions on the basics or usage of Direct Update, please check out the help topic called Enabling Direct Update in the Bronto application.

Getting this set up is as simple as setting up a couple of fields, creating two separate Direct Update strings, and placing them in the right location on your site. Let’s get started…

The Fields

First, the easy part, creating two fields. We’ll use these fields to monitor when a contact has placed something in their cart, and when they complete a purchase. We’ll call our first field ItemInCart. This can be pretty much any type of field you’d like. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll leave it as a text field. The next field we’ll call CompletedPurchase. Again, this can be any type of field. I would recommend a date type field so that you can use this field data in multiple ways to target contacts.

The First Direct Update Statement

Next, we’ll need to set up the first of our two Direct Update code snippets. The base code can be found by going to Home->Settings->Analytics, and then scrolling down to the Direct Update section. In addition to grabbing the code, make sure that the check box under Direct Update is checked. Doing so will activate the feature.

Let’s take a look at a sample of the base code first.

The goal of the first snippet is to let us know that someone has placed an item in their shopping cart. We’ll need to add an operator to the end of the snippet that sets the ItemInCart field to a positive value. To do this, we’ll use the following code:
field1=ItemInCart,set,Yes
The completed Direct Update code snippet would look like this:

Once you’ve got this first snippet, it will need to be placed on your website. Preferably, you should place it on a confirmation page that comes up after a contact adds an item or items to their shopping cart. That way, when they reach this page, the Direct Update code snippet will activate and update their ItemInCart field to ‘Yes’.

The Second Direct Update Statement

Now we’re ready to set up the second and final piece of Direct Update code. We’ll start with the base code again and build from there. This time around, we need to add an operator that sets a contact’s CompletedPurchase field to a certain value. I recommend using the current date. This will allow you to use this data for other segmenting purposes.
field1=CompletedPurchase,set,10/27/2009
In order to set to the current date, you will need to use some simple javascript that will be run from your own server. Click here and check out Example 1 for a simple script to call the current date. It is important to note that the date must be specified in the format you have designated for date fields on the Formatting page located at Home->Settings->Formatting. In addition, we need to remove the positive value from the ItemInCart field so that we don’t accidentally pull in people that have completed a purchase. We’ll use the following to do so:
field2=ItemInCart,set,No
The completed Direct Update code snippet would look like this:

This second code snippet will also need to be placed on your website. This one should be placed on the order confirmation screen, after the purchase has been completed. It will set the contact’s CompletedPurchase field to the date defined, and will set their ItemInCart field to No.

Segmenting with Reckless Abandon

All that remains is to find the people in your contact list that have abandoned their shopping cart and give them a little incentive to complete the purchase! This can be very easily done by creating a simple segment that searches for contacts in your account that have a value of Yes in the ItemInCart field. Once that segment is created, all you have to do is send your message to it.

Careful Considerations

One small caveat to this post is that the whole thing will only work if a couple of conditions are met. First, the contact must have clicked on a link in an email sent via Bronto, which will open a tracking cookie on their computer. The cookie will allow the Direct Update code to work. Second, they must have cookies enabled in their web browser.

There you have it, a relatively simple way to set up an abandoned shopping cart tracking mechanism for your Bronto contacts. Keeping track of when your contacts do not complete a purchase can be just as important as keeping track of when they do. Are you currently using this method to increase conversions? Are you using a different method? Let us know in the comments.

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

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