Description of Sueetie's Constant Contact Integration services in Sueetie Subscriptions. Constant Contact Integration services are included in the
Sueetie Premium Edition.Bringing Better Email Communications to Your Sueetie Community
Sueetie Subscriptions Constant Contact services gives you the ability to share focused email communications with members of your online community based on specific criteria unique to your community. With Sueetie Subscriptions you can create contact lists, manage your contacts, and even give your members the ability to manage their own subscriptions.
Let's look at the Sueetie Subscriptions Main Menu in the Addon Pack Administration area. The main features are adding and managing your Constant Contact Subscribers, add community groups to a Constant Contact List, create Constant Contact Import files, and other subscription support functions.
You can search users to manage their Constant Contact Subscriptions or display all subscribers as shown below.
Sueetie and Constant Contact, An Efficient Integration Architecture¶
The Constant Contact API is very robust and enables you to perform most services remotely, as we're implementing in Sueetie. Looking at a Sueetie Subscriptions Contact Management form, for instance, there is no "local" data or storage requirement for the Contact List selections. There is no need to update data both locally and at Constant Contact, making the integration architecture very efficient. We'll see this demonstrated again later with the Member Profile pages where site members can manage their own subscriptions.
Constant Contact Lists Based on Your Community Dynamics
A function of Sueetie Subscriptions that is very powerful is the ability to add members to Constant Contact lists based on your own community's member criteria. Let's use an example to demonstrate how powerful this function really is.
We're implementing three email lists at Sueetie.com: The Sueetie Monthly Newsletter, New Product Release Announcements, and Sueetie Insiders. We want to send out an email to all members who downloaded any version of Sueetie when a new version is released. With Sueetie Subscriptions we can generate a list of all members who fit that criteria and automatically add them to the Constant Contact New Product Release Announcements List. It is important to remember that members can unsubscribe any time both at Constant Contact and in their site member profile.
Below is a screenshot listing the various Member Dynamics for which you can populate your Constant Contact Lists. Those groups are
- All Active Members
- Members who subscribed to your Site Newsletter
- Members who authored content in your site forums
- Those who purchased products in your Marketplace
- Combined members who authored content and purchased Marketplace products
- Combined authors, purchasers and newsletter subscribers
- Members who are active but who never created any content, subscribed to the newsletter or purchased any products
Self-Service Member Subscription Management
Your members can manage all of their site publications on their member profile page as shown below. As we mentioned before, all list data is generated through the Constant Contact APIs, so any list or list subscription changes on Constant Contact are instantly reflected in the Sueetie Member Profile pages.
Non-Constant Contact Email Subscriptions
If you don't want to use Constant Contact and simply want to list emails for your own email efforts, all Group Definitions listed above are available for display and cut-n-paste into your BC field.
Site Newsletter Now Integrated into Constant Contact Services
The "Subscribe to Site Newsletter" checkbox on site registration is now integrated into Sueetie Subscriptions. We built in safeguards in the remote process of communicating with Constant Contact by designing a Subscriber Queue and a background task which performs the Constant Contact creation process. That way we know nothing can get in the way of a positive, error-free registration user experience.
Getting Started with Constant Contact
The easiest way to get started with Constant Contact is by using an Import Contact File. First we're going to use the Sueetie Subscriptions "Create Contact Import File" function to create an import file of precisely the members we want to add to our Constant Contact Account.
We're next going to use Sueetie's contact file to create our Constant Contact List. Here's what that looks like at Constant Contact. In your Contact Management area, select "Add Contacts" then "From a File."
Constant Contact Fields
Regarding the use of Constant Contact fields, Sueetie uses First Name, Last Name, Email and Company Name. These are equivalent to Email - SueetieUser Email, First Name - SueetieUser Display Name, Last Name - SueetieUser UserID, and Company Name: SueetieUser UserName. We are using those fields because Sueetie doesn't use "First" and "Last" name fields, and the remaining UserName and UserID fields can meet any analytics needs for links and associated reporting. They also populate Constant Contact's default contact list nicely.
When using the contact import from a file described above, remember to set the columns from the Sueetie Contact Import .TXT file accordingly. They should be assigned as below. It's a small image, but the column heading fields from left to right are: 1) Email Address, 2) First Name, 3) Last Name and 4) Company Name.
Setting Up Your Constant Contact Account in Sueetie
Sueetie Subscription Settings are where you'll enter your Constant Contact API Key and Account information to use Sueetie's integrated subscription services. The Newsletter List ID is used in the API for adding subscribers to your site newsletter. We'll discuss the various ListID fields next.
Keeping your Group Contact Lists Current
We've discussed how to use various member group dynamics to build your Constant Contact Lists, but what about keeping those lists current? If we populate our Constant Contact New Product Releases List on a Tuesday based on all prior Marketplace Purchases, what happens when purchases are made on Wednesday?
This is where Sueetie Subscription List ID settings come into play. Sueetie adds group action triggers to maintain your Constant Contact Lists for you, so that whenever someone purchases a product in your Marketplace, for instance, they are automatically added to any Contact Lists you wish. Each of your Constant Contact Lists has a List ID assigned by Constant Contact, which is what we see listed in the fields above. For Sueetie.com, "1" is the Sueetie Monthly Newsletter, and "2" is the New Product Releases Announcement. So on the image above, whenever a member purchases a Marketplace Product or participates in the Forum, they are added to the Sueetie Newsletter and New Product Release Announcement lists.
When we say members are automatically added based on activity, every list subscription is permission-based. We built in the intelligence so that if anyone unsubscribes from a Constant Contact List they will not be re-added when entering a forum post or purchasing a product. We also built in the intelligence so that if someone is already a member of that list, no processing takes place. All processing takes place in the background, so we can be thorough.
Sueetie Product Keys and Feature Freedom¶
Constant Contact Integration services are included in the
Sueetie Premium Edition. Free and Sueetie Supporter Product Keys are available in the
Sueetie Marketplace.Top