API: how to have custom code per-mailing, not per-contact (ie news in brand template)

[TinaI37]

What we want to do is send out simple news items on our own standard email template using the API.

So I thought this would mean having a template on constant contact, and then sending a campaign with a couple of changed custom items, like the news text and the date.

So it seems perhaps we could create a campaign and save it as a draft.   Each time we want to send a news, we use the "campaign id" and "campaign activity id"  for that one campaign, and PUT the list of current recipients and do the send. 

BUT:  I don't see a way to change a piece of the content of the campaign (ie our current news item) that is not per-contact.  What am I missing?  

Thank you.

[Courtney_E · Accepted solution]

Hello TinaI37,

Thank you for reaching out to Constant Contact API Developer Support. My team is here to assist outside software developers with questions about building into Constant Contact's API.

To automate creating/updating a template via the API, you'd need to utilize HTML code to create a Custom Code email, as the API does not offer support for email campaigns built within the editor. Essentially you'd build your application to update the lines of code that you specify (images/links/text) and then format and send that HTML via the API to your Constant Contact account.

Create the HTML code for your Custom Code email template.

[Designing HTML for Custom Code Emails]

https://v3.developer.constantcontact.com/api_guide/design_code_emails.html

Use your template code to create an email draft.

[Create an Email Campaign]

https://v3.developer.constantcontact.com/api_guide/email_campaign_create.html

Please have a look and let us know if you have any other questions!

[user296898]

It sounds like you are trying to use the Constant Contact API to send out customized news items to your email list. If I understand correctly, you want to create a campaign template and then use that template to send out new updates by changing the news text and date for each email.

You are correct that you can create a campaign template in Constant Contact and save it as a draft. You can then use the API to add or remove contacts from the list of recipients and send the email. However, if you want to change the content of the campaign for each email, you will need to create a new campaign each time.

One way to achieve this is to use the Constant Contact API to create a new campaign for each news item. You can create a template for the campaign that includes your standard email design, and then add the news item and date as custom fields. You can then use the API to add the recipients to the campaign and send the email.

Alternatively, you could use a third-party email marketing tool that allows you to create dynamic templates. With a dynamic template, you can define fields for the content that can be filled in with different values for each email. This would allow you to send out customized news items without having to create a new campaign for each email.

I hope this helps!