Obtain the URL

In order to begin using Direct Add, you need to enable the feature and obtain the Direct Add URL. To do this:

1. Go to Home->Settings->Data Exchange.
2. Scroll to the Direct Add section and click the Enable Direct Add for adding new contacts checkbox.
3. Optionally, you can check Add contacts with “unconfirmed” status. (By default all contacts are added with “active” status.)

Understand the URL

The Direct Add URL works by you specifying parameters that correspond to a contact to add, fields and data you want to associate the contact with, and lists you want to add the contact to. We will be adding these parameters to the image URL in the following format: &email=email@example.com&field1=field, operation, value&list2=listid. For example:

The first part of the URL is given to you as part of the code snippet you got from the Direct Add section on the Data Exchange page. This is unique to each account and allows the application to identify your account. The next few parameters, q, fn, and id allow us to know how to process the data that is to follow, as well as identify your account. The last bit, is the actual string that we created earlier.

Construct The URL

At a really high level, Direct Add works by specifying a contact that you want to add, field data that you want to include for the contact, and a list you want to add the contact to. This is accomplished by adding parameters to a URL contained in an image tag in the following format: &email=example@example.com&field1=fieldname, operation, value&list2=listid. Notice that for fields, you specify the field name, followed by add, and then a specific data value. For lists, you only need the list ID.

Fields

In order to specify a field to add, you will need to use the exact spelling of that field as you specified it within the application. You can see a listing of all your contact fields by going to Contacts->Fields. Because you are adding a new contact, you will only be able to use add as the operation when adding field data. Note – add only supports numerical field types. The field types supported are number, decimal, and currency.

Lists

In order to specify a list to add the contact to, you will need to make note of the id that corresponds to the specific list. For any list, you can go to Contacts->Lists and click on the name of the list you want to use. On the Overview page for that list, you will see an id number for the list. Make note of the list id, as it will be used in the Direct Add URL.

Multiple Adds

You can add more than one field and or list at a time. The application supports adding up to 10 parameters (fields, lists, or a combination of both) within one call. Additional fields and lists are included by adding another value parameter to the image URL. Multiple fields and lists are separated by the ampersand character (&). You also need to increment the number after each field or list. For example:

Finishing Up

All you need to do is include this HTML snippet on pages on your website linked to from emails you send via the application, define the email address of the contact being added, add any field and field data you want to include, add any list you want to add the contact to (refer to the list using the list ID), and tack that data onto the URL provided on the Data Exchange page. You can dynamically add this data to the URL using the language of your choice, such as PHP or Javascript

This was a lot of information to cover, but hopefully you now have a good idea of how Direct Add works and how you can use it to add contacts to specific lists. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

John Gunther
Technical Writer/eLearning Specialist
Editor of Brontoversity

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Our DIY Integrations series will explore how to set up these mini-integrations. In this episode, we’ll be talking about a feature called Direct Add. We won’t be doing a step-by-step walk through here, as every implementation will be a bit different. Rather, this post is more of an overview describing what the feature is and general information on how to implement it.

Direct Add

The Direct Add feature enables you to feed information from forms on your site directly into your Bronto mailing lists. This feature adds data to your account by calling a specially formatted image tag that contains account-specific parameters.  To get started using Direct Add, you’ll need to create a Web Form in your Bronto account that includes all of the fields that you would like to pass from a form on your website.   Once the Bronto Web Form is created, you can access the code to implement this feature by clicking the Advanced Form Usage tab, and then scrolling down to the Direct Add section.

Below is an example of a possible Direct Add URL:

The first part of the path (http:// through the ID string) notifies the application of the account, list, and form with which the path is associated. “&a=DirectAdd” is calling the actual function to process the data that is to follow. The last bit is the actual string that was created earlier in your script. To make sure that field values are correctly mapped from your account to the Direct Add form, we provide a list of available field values (click screenshot below).

The name of the field will come first, followed by an equal sign, and then the actual value. To add additional fields and values, you will tack on an ampersand and then repeat the format for the first field.

Once your URL is set up, you can place it within the body tag of the confirmation or thank you page of your website form.  It is very important that the URL is placed on the page following the actual form so that data that is inserted into the form can be passed to the URL string.

So that is a simple breakdown on how to push information from your form to Bronto using Direct Add. This method is definitely not for everyone, and does require some experience with web programming. However, with the right know how, Direct Add is a great way to get integrated without fussing with an API. Join us next time on DIY Integrations when we’ll be talking about the Direct Update feature.

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

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