You know that this data can be imported using a csv file and the import tool in the Bronto web app, but how about with the API? We talked about adding contacts using version 3 in Welcome Friend! Adding New Contacts Using the API, but let’s look at the contactObject to see how we might use it to add or update contacts with version 4.

Let’s first look at the fields portion (in bold) of the addContacts SOAP request message below(note: updateContacts uses the same contact object and readContacts returns the same object).

You might never need to actually look at a SOAP message or a WSDL if your IDE/SOAP library takes care of that for you, but it can definitely be helpful when trying to understand how the requests and responses are passed back and forth. Most of the attributes are self descriptive and using them is hopefully straight forward. The fields attribute however takes a little more explaining.

In the WSDL you will see that it is defined as:

<xs:element maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" name="fields" nillable="true" type="tns:contactField"/>

This tells us that the fields item is a group of zero or more contactField objects. In most programming languages, that type of structure would be represented as an array of contactField objects. These contactField objects in turn contain two items; fieldId and content. The content is the actual data that you want to store and the fieldId is a static id that is assigned to each of your fields when they are created. The fieldId can be retrieved using the readFields function. Since the fieldIds are static, it probably makes sense to go ahead and store these locally so they do not need to be read each time you want to use them. The easiest thing to do is to call readFields once with an empty filter and store the field information in a configuration file. That way, adding or removing fields will not require changes to your code.

With this information in hand, it will hopefully make more sense on how you would go about passing in contact information. So don’t leave those fields empty any more.

Alex Durzy
Support Engineer at Bronto

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Earlier this year, Frank Chapman gave us a great post on how to use personalization in your messages, Getting Personal With Your Contacts. If you’re wondering how to get started using personalization, check out his article for a quick how-to guide.

If you’re already personalizing your emails, though, you may be missing out on a key feature: personalization testing. You probably already know that Bronto’s Send Test feature provides a quick view of message formatting and layout in your inbox. But with one simple step, you can also test your message personalization fields to ensure they’re working properly.

Once you’ve composed your message and are ready to test it out, click the Send Test button.

On the next page, set your sending options and recipients. Then, check the box marked “Use a random contact for personalization” shown below. Choosing this will pull the field value from a random contact and use it within your test message.

Only the field value from the random contact will be pulled – they will not be sent the message. Only the person(s) you specify in the sending options will receive the message.

Once you’ve checked this box, proceed with verifying and sending your test message. When you receive the message, you’ll see your personalization tag replaced with a value pulled from a random contact!

As always, if you have any questions about personalizing messages, 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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Integrating your website or database with a third party application (like Bronto) can be a pain. It can take hours of expensive development work, and requires in-depth planning and forethought.  Luckily, if you have web programming experience, you can get some basic integrations up and running in a relatively short amount of time.

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 Update. 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 Update

The Direct Update feature enables you to update information in a contact’s fields whenever they visit a page on your website.  You can add or subtract from numerical values, as well as set any field to a specific value.  This allows you to easily keep contact information up to date without manually importing or updating data.  This feature adds data to your account by calling a specially formatted image tag that contains account-specific parameters.

To get started using Direct Update, you’ll need to enable it in your account. To do this, just go to the Home tab -> Settings -> Analytics.   Once you are on the Analytics Settings page, just click the checkbox next to Direct Update, and then click Save at the bottom of the page.

Fields

In order to specify a field to update, 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. Any field can be updated with Direct Update, but some fields only support certain operations.

Operations And Values

There are 4 different operations: set, add, append, and sub ( which is short for subtract). add and sub are only supported by the numerical field types. append allows you to track multiple values without having to create a large number of individual fields. The listing below gives more information about working with the different types of fields. Be sure to use only lower case letters for the operators.

• Number, decimal, and currency fields support the operations of set, add, and sub. The value provided may be a positive or negative number. Decimal values provided operations on a Number field will be rounded accordingly.
• Date fields support the set operator. The value must be a date specified in the format you have designated for date fields on the Formatting page located at Home->Settings->Formatting.
• Text and Text Area fields only support the set and append operator. The text value that is passed in will need to be url escaped if it contains any special characters such as ?, &, =, or %.
• Checkbox fields only support set with a value of 0 for unchecked and 1 for checked.
• Radio button and pull down fields only support set. The value provided must exactly match one of the existing options for a given field – this means they must have the same spelling, case, and any included spaces.

Possible Uses

Product Interest

This example updates a field whenever a contact visits the product page for a specific high value product. This allows us to send an email to people who have checked out a product within the last month:

field1=productxvisit,set,05/12/2008

Purchase Details

Below you can see an example that is used on a purchase confirmation page. Here the contact has made a purchase totaling 129.23, so we add that to the field lifetimevalue. We also update the field lastpurchaseddate to the date of purchase. This one update will give us the ability to segment our contacts based on dollar amount purchased, as well as recency of purchase – fantastic segments for very targeted mailings!

field1=lifetimevalue,add,129.23&field2=lastpurchaseddate,set,12/15/2007

Deconstructing the Direct Update snippet

Below is an example of a possible Direct Update code snippet:

<img height="0" width="0" border="0" src="http://example.com/ public/?q=direct_update amp;fn=Public_DirectUpdateForm&id=IDSTRING&field1=lifetimevalue,add,129.23 amp;field2=lastpurchasedate,set,09/15/2009">

The first part of the URL is given to you as part of the code snippet you got from the Direct Update section on the Analytics 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, field1=lifetimevalue,add,129.23&field2=lastpurchasedate,set,12/15/2007 is the actual string that updates the fields. As you can see, all you need to do is define your update pieces and tack them onto the URL provided on the Analytics page.

So that is a simple breakdown on how to maintain up to date contact field information without a lengthy integration process. This method is definitely not for everyone, and does require some experience with web programming. However, with the right know how, Direct Update is a great way to get integrated without fussing with an API. Are you successfully using the Direct Update feature? Let us know in the comments!

Lucas Weber
Bronto Client Services

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Here is a demonstration on how you would export all of your inactive contacts in a Bronto account.

First, you will nead to click on the Contacts tab to get to the Contacts Dashboard.

Near the top right of the Contacts dashboard there is an Export link.  Click on this link and you will go to the Export page. Here is what the Export page looks like in Bronto.

There are three sections on this page that you need to be aware of.  The first is the status of the contacts that you are creating the report for. The three choices that you have are Active, Inactive and All.  In this demo we are choosing Inactive.  If you have a question concerning this terminology, please refer to our Brontoversity post – “What’s Your Contact’s Status?” for a complete description.

Below this you will find the “Choose Fields” section. In this section you can decide what field information you would like to export for each of the contacts in the report. Notice that there are links that will allow you to choose “Select All” or “Select None”  easily with one click.  In this demonstration we are choosing to include the information stored in Bronto for the first and last names of each contact.  It is important to remember that you should only export the field information that you need.  Excess information will only increase file size and may extend the time that you will have to wait for the report to generate.

Your last option on this page is to request email notification that your report has been generated.  If you are exporting a large number of contacts, or fields, it may take the application a few minutes to generate your report.  If this is the case, enter your email address in the box provided and Bronto will send you a message to alert you that the report is ready upon completion.

Once you have completed adding the criteria for your export, click the Generate link. Bronto will start the background process of creating your report. You will then receive a banner that informs you that the export process has started.  Once you receive this, banner you are free to work in other areas of Bronto as the report is compiled.

Once you receive notification from Bronto that the report has been generated, you will be able to find it in the “Recent Reports” section in the lower right corner of the Home Dashboard.  The report will be in the form of a .CSV file that can be easily opened and edited in most spreadsheet applications.

So the next time your boss needs you to provide a list of all of your contacts with their data, you should be able to pull it out of Bronto with ease.  If you have any questions on the Export feature, please leave a comment below or contact Bronto Client Services.

Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services

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A Greeting For Each Of Your Contacts

Adding a personalized greeting using a contact’s first name in Bronto is an easy way to add a little more impact to any campaign.  To add a contact’s first name to an email, all you need is the contact’s name and a little know-how concerning field tags.

In this example we will be adding the contact’s first name in a salutation.  You will need to have a field in Bronto that is storing your contacts’ first names.  It is important to note that the name for a field needs to be in all lower case with no spaces.  In the case of the illustration below, the name of this field is “firstname”.

Now, to add the field to your message, you will add this code %%firstname%% where you would like to see the name appear.

The application will see this tag and add the name as the message is sent.  The resulting message salutation will look like this:

What If I Do Not Have Everybody’s Name?

It’s okay, Bronto can help with that as well.  You will need to decide how you would like to refer to your contacts that you do not have first name information for.  As an example, we will call our nameless contacts “Valued Customer”.

The tag that you would need to us is %%if(%%firstname%% is empty,"Valued Customer",%%firstname%%)%%.  This tag should look like the one in the image below when you preview your message.

This “if statement” is letting the Bronto application know that you would like to use the first name for the contact, unless you have no data available in the field for that contact.  If there is no data, the application will substitute the statement inside the quotation marks.

A Few Things To Remember About Field Tags In Bronto

• You must have a field in your account that corresponds to the field tag you wish to use (i.e. the “firstname” field that corresponds with the %%firstname%% field tag).
• You must refer to the field exactly by name. Spelling counts and the tag is case sensitive.
• Field tags aren’t just for just salutations.  You can use field tags and the data that goes along with them for many other marketing purposes. Some examples of this would be, recent product purchases, important dates, or a dynamic link to a contacts personal landing page.

With a creative mind and a good knowledge of how field tags work in Bronto, you now have a tool with limitless marketing possibilities.  Please use this tool wisely and remember to always test and then test again.

Frank Chapman
Client Support Specialist at Bronto

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