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Transactional and other personalized emails
This part of the document describes the different ways through which an external system can use MailUp to send email messages with dynamic contents: this way, it is possible Sending messages through MailUp from an external application allows you to take advantage of:
- The high reputation and scalability of the MailUp
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- sending infrastructure
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- Automatic bounce and feedback loop management
- Ability to include dynamic tags and dynamic content
- Ability to check the send status via API
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MailUp can manage the whole process automatically, so:
- messages Messages are sent very quickly, thanks to an oversized a robust and scalable infrastructure that guarantees immediate sending (except in case of grey listing on destination servers).
- There are no bandwidth restrictions here and a dedicated channel is used for sending these messages (no queue-related delay). Anyway, this functionality should not be overused, not to lose these benefits automatic
- Automatic processes can be activated following actions that users might have performed.
- NOTE: this channel cannot be used to send bulk email messages, but rather only for transactional emails. There are limitations in place that prevent system abuse.
MailUp can send transactional emails in two ways, as described below:. :
By using the method used to send confirmtaion messages
MailUp sends a confirmation message to subscribers through an automatic procedure. Subscription can take place in two ways:
- Standard APIs HTTP Get/Post API (subscribe.aspx, xmlsubscribe.aspx)
- Import Web Service (WebService MailUpImport)
The content of the subscription confirmation message can be edited, so to make it correspond to the template of the message you want to send (there is only one confirmation message for each list, but countless lists are availableyou can set up multiple lists within your MailUp account).
The confirmation message can be personalized with the recipient's personal data by using dynamic fields (up to 40 available when purchasing the Marketing+ package).
These emails can also contain a link triggering an action (opening of a messages page and automatic sending of another email), through the use of SUB link. A specific list can be created for the purpose, and each list can have a different sender address.
By using Web services
A web service allows the immediate sending of a single message. This procedure is much more flexible, but it is paramount to follow the instructions provided in the section describing this function.
The WS_MailUpSend.SendSingleNewsletter method allows to send an email message with the indication of subject, recipients and contents.
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| Note |
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| When using SendSingleNewsletter(), the best practice is to use predefined messages with dynamic sections, and not to create a brand new newsletter for each call. In this case MailUp would keep on using space to store the new |
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| content, which can negatively affect performance for your MailUp account. |
Bulk messages
This section describes the different ways through which MailUp can be used to send email messages to groups and lists of users without accessing the administration console. The methods described above suit to small automations, but can be used to send individual, personalized messages, such as transactional emails. However, if the goal is to send huge large amounts of newsletters messages or DEMs, the best practice to be followed follow is described below.
Standard Web Services
Some possible scenarios are presented here - with the indication of the web services to be used - as examples of frequent casesof common scenarios. This is not in no way an exhaustive overview of all the possibilities anywaypossible scenarios.
In the following examples the aspects regarding the authentication to web services are not approached. WS_MailUpImport authentication methods are different from the other web services. Please Please note that these examples do not talk about authentication. Please refer to the related documentation for details on authentication.
Example 1: message and recipients exist in the MailUp admin console
You may want to send a message to a group of users and both the message and the recipients list are already available in the MailUp console.
- If the message has to be sent to all the recipients in a list the suggested method is WS_MailUpSend.SendNewsletter method. Parameters "send_to = ALL" , list ID, message ID and time and date of sending must be specified. Message and list IDs can be found at the page Settings > Table codes in the MailUp console, or using GetLists() and GetNewsletters() methods.
- If the recipients are just some groups in a list, when calling the SendNewsletter() method the group IDs must be specified as well.
- If the users share data that can be extracted using one of the MailUp filters (personal data, activity and geolocation filters, available in the Marketing+ package) when calling the SendNewsletter() method the filter to be applied must be indicated as well. Filters can be used in addition or as an alternative to groups. The great advantage of using them lies in the fact that all the users matching a certain condition are automatically included in the filter results, whereas a user must be inserted into a group for group membership.
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It is imperative that you do not use SendSingleNewsletter() in place of SendNewsletter(): the first one has to be used only for transactional emails, as described above. Use of SendSingleNewsletter() for the purpose of sending bulk email messages will trigger a send block on your account and may lead to account termination. |
Example 2: not all recipients exist in the MailUp admin console
Similar to Example 1, but in this case a group of recipients has to be imported as well. Some of these recipients might be already subscribed in MailUp due to a previous signup to a newsletter, some others might be new subscribers.
- Through WS_MailUpImport methods a new temporary group is created (CreateGroup(groupName)) and a group of recipients is imported to it (StartImportProcess(groupID, recipients,…)). This operation may last several minutes, depending on how huge this large the group is, and it can be monitored using GetProcessDetails(). Once the import is finished, SendNewsletter(groupID) method can be used to perform the sending. At the end of the process the group which was created for the purpose must be deleted using DeleteGroup().
- This procedure applies to SMS sending as well: obviously in that case, the method to be used is WS_MailUpSend.SendSMS method.
- The procedure described here above is less effective when there are huge large amounts of data to be imported, so it may be useful to use an alternative procedure that provides for a "bulk" import from a file following an input via web service.
- SendMessageNL(fileName, listId, messageId, timeDateSending,…) method allows to schedule a sending for the desired time and date, then asynchronously executes the following operations:
- Creation of a temporary group
- Import to this group of the recipients indicated in the file
- Sending of the message at the scheduled time and date
- Deletion of the temporary group
Example 3
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: creating and sending a message via the MailUp API
In some cases it may be necessary to import to into MailUp a message created using an external system. The CreateNewsletters() method allows the creation of a new message where the parameter to be passed is the body of the message (html, text or URL that points to the html file).
It is also possible to use the SendNewsletterFast() method, which conveys to a single call the information that can be drawn from the calls to CreateNewsletters() e SendNewsletter() methods.
| Methods creating a new message instead of using an existing one should not be overused. A large number of messages created by the web services (e.g. dozens of messages a day) might cause a system overload and worsen performances on the long term |
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It is imperative that you do not use SendSingleNewsletter() in place of SendNewsletter(): the first one has to be used only for transactional emails, as described above. Use of SendSingleNewsletter() for the purpose of sending bulk email messages will trigger a send block on your account and may lead to account termination. |
Example 4: cloning a message to track separate mailings
Most customers need to track campaign results. Considering that, when When the same message is sent repeatedly (regardless of the number of recipients), the export of statistics via batch cannot associate the clicks to the corresponding mailing, making a copy of the message can be very useful so to have the detail of each sending. CloneMessage() method allows to clone a messagemore than once (three different times, to three different groups), statistics are accumulated and pertain to all mailings, not the three individual mailings. To get around this issue, you can make a copy of a message by cloning it using the CloneMessage() method: once the copy has been created, the sending can be performed as described above as this is treated as a completely new mailing for a completely separate message (even if the actual message being sent is identical to another one).
Note that when using web services it is not possible to manage the import of external campaign codes: this operation requires an import via batch instead.
Batch FTP ZIP
Batch FTP ZIP mode is a special integration allowing to import via batch a zip folder file containing several files with the recipients list, the html message to be sent, and a configuration file that defines the sending mailing details (date, time and so on).
This procedure allows to use MailUp to send messages without accessing the administration console.
Batch FTP ZIP integration is available at for an extra charge; for . For technical details see FTP-based Integrations
Web Service for massive mailings
The MailUp consoleHandling bulk mailings via Web Services
Your MailUp account can be configured to perform massive bulk mailings with highly personalized content, through the use of web services. A special web service method is called, while and parameters such as the recipient's email address and the body of the message are passed; then the . The MailUp console then adds these calls to the queue and a scheduled batch process is in charge of picking and sending blocks of them messages in order to maximize delivery performances according to the purchased bandwidth. This procedure is suitable for high-volume mailings that require sending all the emails within a specified time frame.
Pros:
- Higher performance than traditional web services (sending speed depends on the bandwidth anywaypurchased for the account);
- Ability to manage millions of requests per day, and to respect a deadline of delivery, as long as the bandwidth of the console is consistent with the size of the messages, the desired delivery time and the mailing volumesvolume;
- Avoids issues that afflict traditional web services, when every request involves the creation of a new message;
- Sends completely different personalized messages for each recipient
- Allows to specify a text version of the message, different from the html version.
Cons:
- Designed for cases in which there is no or little need to access the MailUp console, so some features regarding that pertain to the sending or statistics tracking of the message may not be available;
- The console for massive mailings is a spin-off of MailUp 7.3 (released in late 2010), but does not follow the same roadmap of software releases, so it may not support the latest features added to the new releases of the console;
- Sent messages are stored as belonging to the same newsletter. As a consequence, the statistics include just message-level reports filtered by date;
- Not suitable for single messages sent in real time (appropriate configurations can reduce latency to just one minute, although our experience shows that ideal configurations have a latency of 15-30 minutes)
- In order to guarantee the highest level of performance, a periodic removal of unnecessary data is required. For this reason, one MailUp console account is not enough for an intensive 24x7 usage: in this case, it is recommended to purchase two or more MailUp consoles accounts and configure the web service calls distribution in such a way that every day each console account has a peak of intensive usage and an idle period. The web service interface is always the same even with more than one console.