New Dynamic Content guide

[Rich_M541]

We've added a new page that explains generating dynamic content in email campaigns using contact variables, including Custom Fields. Please check it out. 

https://developer.constantcontact.com/docs/developer-guides/custom-content.html

Your feedback is welcome.

[MatthewM3151]

Why where dynamic content variables removed from links in the new editor, this causes big issues for me.

Is there a way to pass email address or contactId in the new editor?

[Jimmy_D]

Hello Matthew,

Our new editor does have the ability to insert Contact Details. When you have the editor open for a text section there is an insert button you can click on to insert a Greeting or Contact Details. Here is a screenshot of the button I am referring to.

[MatthewM3151]

Thanks for the reply, this works when adding to the body but does not seem to work when adding the variable to a link. For example if I wanted to pass the email address to my website so my crm could track a leads engagement.

Any thoughts?

[Jimmy_D]

Hi Matthew,

Creating a dynamic link such as you are wanting to do currently does not work as all links in our new editor are tracked and there is no way to turn tracking off at this time. I have added feedback on your behalf to our existing feature request to be able to turn off link tracking.

The reason dynamic links does not work is because each one is unique and link tracking will not work on the different URLs.

[MatthewM3151]

I see, well the documentation for the old editor recomended turning tracking off although I never did and never had any issues.

The tracking link itself is dynamic but the url you redirect to after the link is clicked is static, otherwise the subscriber would never make it to where the link specified for them to go.

Any Help would be appreciated,

Matthew Maennche

[David_B.]

Hi Matthew,

Our link tracking service is run before the process that fills in contact details. The process that will drop in your individual contact's information will see the encoded tracked link, and not see any contact details in it to fill in. 

This is a feature that we are looking into for our current 3rd Generation Editor, however we don't have a timeframe that we can provide on when such a feature might be implemented.

Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Sincerely,

David B.

API Support Specialist

[Local509]

I have created dynamic links in Constant Contact in the past and it is important for my organization to be able to continue doing so.

Turning off tracking for specific links was an essential feature and I would like to urge Constant Contact to go back to allowing that. For our purposes, even turning off link tracking for entire emails would suffice as long as there was some way to do dynamic links.

[MatthewM3151]

What's worse is it is jsut lazy programming, there is no real reason to even need to turn tracking off. If the routine was written correctly it simply needs to replace the variables with the correct information after the tracking routine is processed.

I agree, the is absolutely no reason to move backwords.

[RobinP12156]

Is there any update on a solution for this? Being able to pass a dynamic variable like the subscriber email seems like something that should be supported..

[Jimmy_D]

Hello @RobinP12156,

I can understand the frustration this can cause for some of our users and while this is something we are working to add in to our current editor our engineers prioritize the requests based on customer feedback. Right now this issue has not had a lot of customer requests. Everyone in this thread has already been added to the feedback requesting this feature and I've just updated the request again.

[DerekM2]

This is critical functionality for various reasons including managing subscribed lists based on actions taken by a contact and to track affiliate/partner conversions via links. This severely limits transactional email options. The fact that this is not available currently and is apparently not a priority is baffling. It seems CC is focused on simple use cases that do not include API integrations and serious marketing. I'm frustrated that I have spent time developing to an API where maintenance and functionality is not a priority. Other developers beware!

These are additional issues:

• Unable to GET a list of custom fields via the API

• Unable CRUD custom fields with names via the API

• Just recently the options to update custom fields via the API have stopped working

• Unable to manage tags via the API

• Unable to use dynamic links

• When editing lists or contacts, unable to see current tags or lists in UI

• Receiving this response intermittently when using the API: Service Unavailable: Back-end server is at capacity 503

[Kipu55]

whats the syntax for adding the contact's unique id to an email body? I want to pass the id via the url  query string and do a call on the back-end to retrieve the users data (avoiding PII and do not want to pass the email address value in a url query string).

Once I have the ID I can get the relevant info in a secure matter 

https://api.constantcontact.com/v2/contacts/$ccId?api_key=$apiKey

[Courtney_E]

Hello,

In order to insert the Constant Contact contactId into the body of an email, you would need to retrieve the contactId and then add it as a Custom Field within the contact in order to use it as part of a Dynamic Link. We don't currently offer a way to insert the contactId directly into an email campaign.

Bulk Activities - Export Contacts Endpoint
https://v2.developer.constantcontact.com/docs/bulk_activities_api/bulk-activities-export-contacts.ht...