Activities enhancment request

[jamesbensonuk]

I'm suprised the activities API does not have this feature already.

Would be good if I could bulk unsubscribe certain email addresses, the only way I can unsubscribe people now is by clearing a whole contact list, this may be good in certain situations but think being able to bulk unsubscribe people either via email address or account URI/ID would be very useful.

For example, my drupal module has a feature to mass unsubscribe people, I'm having to use the remove contact resource instead of the bulk activities resource, this may lead to hundreds of requests one after the other to delete the user.

[DanHoran]

There is an activity for removing one or more contacts from one or more lists similar to how you can add one or more contacts to one or more list. By using the activity type "REMOVE_CONTACTS_FROM_LISTS". More information can be found by scrolling to the "Creating an Add Contacts/Remove Contacts Activity" heading of this page: http://developer.constantcontact.com/doc/activities.

[jamesbensonuk]

Hi Dan,

Clearing all contacts from a certaing contact list is not what I meant. I mean bulk unsubscribe certain email addresses from all lists.

Basically I would just pass a bunch of email addresses in CSV or TEXT format to your API and this would do the same as the DELETE command does, removing a user from all lists.

Thanks,

[DanHoran]

Hey James,

I think I understand what you are looking to do but just to clarify. If you are looking to unsubscribe the contacts and move them to the Do-Not-Mail list, then you only have the standard "DELETE" call to rely on and you must call individually. We understand that a Delete activity is useful and I will suggest that to the API Team.

If you are looking to remove a group of contacts from all lists and set them as a "Removed" contact you can use the aforementioned "REMOVE_CONTACTS_FROM_LISTS" activity type and specify the contacts that you would like to remove from the lists. You will need to specify all of the lists that you would like to remove them from so it would be best to GET all of the lists and build the request dynamically. If the contact is removed from all lists they will then be placed on the 'Removed' list. Here is an example:

activityType=REMOVE_CONTACTS_FROM_LISTS&data=Email+Address%0A

paul42%40example.com%0A

john%40example.com%0A

&lists=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.constantcontact.com%2Fws%2Fcustomers%2Fusername%2Flists%2F13%0A

&lists=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.constantcontact.com%2Fws%2Fcustomers%2Fusername%2Flists%2F20

I hope that this helps with your script.

Also, thank you for your contributions within this developer forum. Your knowledge and participation is greatly appreciated.

[JanL4]

Is it possible to resurrect this? Was a solution ever created? Im not a developer just a user searching for solutions.  I want to unsubscribe a list of email address' from a contact list by submitting the csv or txt list and say, "Unsubscribe these". As of now i have to cliick individual emails to remove and that isn't feasable when trying to remove 80 plus emails from a list of 250, etc.

[DaveBerard Moderator]

If you're looking to do this through our online user interface, this is a very easy thing to do by clicking on the "Contacts" tab and then the link for "Do Not Mail" under the Move Contacts section (right side of the page, a little ways down).  That will allow you to either paste in up to 100 names or upload a file (.CSV, .TXT or .XLS/X) to move those Contacts to the Do Not Mail list.

This feature is not currently available through the API.  It is something we're continuing to look at as a possible future feature enhancement and will update the developer community if we add this to the API feature set.