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Manage single recipients (subscribe, unsubscribe, update)
MailUp provides several ways to add a new subscriber and manage either data fields or subscription status. If you’re in the process of developing a generic application interacting with multiple accounts, it must be considered that personal data fields may differ from account to account.
We recommend always making use of the “retrieve field names” feature, returning the actual field names and Id occurrences for a particular admin console account. Those returned occurrences can be used to update personal data recipient fields afterward.
Click here to expand and see available solutions and recommended methods
HTTP GET/POST and subscription forms
Subscription forms are based on HTTP GET/POST methods, which allow subscription unsubscription, check subscription status and update for a single recipient. These methods support optin, confirmed optin, optout, fields update, unsubscription. Refer to this page if you want to build a custom subscription form using AJAX. The retrieve fields feature is not available with HTTP GET/POST.
Click here to expand for recommended methods
Action | Comments | Get/Post API |
| Confirm successful communication with the API | This method may be useful if your application needs to ping mailup to check current authentication and connection statuses. | WSActivation.aspx |
Activation | You can enable HTTP GET/POST calls for any caller, you can restrict usage to a set of IPs or you can call a method that registers the caller IP to add it to the list of authorized IPs. | WSActivation.aspx |
Single Subscribe (client-side) | Subscribes a single recipient to one or more lists (e.g. during checkout or registration) by calling a page that redirects to a landing page displaying the result | Subscribe.aspx |
| Single Subscribe (server side1) | Subscribes a single recipient to one or more lists (e.g. during checkout or registration) and returns a result to the caller | Xmlsubscribe.aspx |
Single Unsubscribe (server side1) | Unsubscribes a single recipient from one or more lists (e.g. customer updates their account in the storefront) and returning a result | XmlUnsubscribe.aspx |
Single Update (server side1) | Updates a single recipient based on mapped data fields (e.g. first name, last name, etc) and return a result | XmlUpdSubscriber.aspx |
Retrieve subscription status for a specific customer and list (server side1) | Retrieves recipient’s status ( subscribed, pending, or unsubscribed ) | XmlChkSubscriber.aspx |
(1) requires server-side development, and in the case of AJAX implementations, this operation cannot be done directly from a client page because cross-domain requests are blocked by the "same-origin policy"
REST API
Rest API handles subscription status, group membership, and personal data fields. In addition, it is the only MailUp solution that allows the removal of a single recipient from a group. Adding a new recipient is an asynchronous process (i.e. the method's response does not mean that the operation is completed, you could use a specific method to get the status of the requested operation). Retrieve fields feature is available with GET /Console/Recipient/DynamicFields
Although the MailUp REST API is the most complete solution for managing a single subscriber, please keep in mind that it is subject to rate limiting, so some calls could be blocked if you are exceeding the allowed number of calls/s. For this reason, if your source is a web form with high subscription traffic you would be better off considering the HTTP GET/POST for new subscriptions.
Click here to expand for recommended methods
Action | Comments | REST API |
Confirm successful communication with the API | Returns authentication information.
| GET /Console/Authentication/Info |
Retrieve Lists | Retrieves all lists related information | GET /Console/User/Lists |
| Retrieve Groups | Retrieves groups for a certain list | GET /Console/List/{ID_LIST}/Groups |
Retrieve Fields | Retrieves the actual personal data field names along with ids. Useful for adding or updating subscribers’ personal information afterward. | GET /Console/Recipient/DynamicFields |
Single Subscribe | Subscribes a single recipient to one list (e.g. during checkout or registration). A confirmed optin process can be implemented using the ConfirmEmail parameter | POST Console/List/{ListID}/Recipient (without COI) POST Console/List/{ListID}/Recipient?ConfirmEmail=true (with COI) |
Single Unsubscribe | Unsubscribes a single recipient from one or more lists (e.g. customer updates their account in the storefront) | DELETE /Console/List/{id_List}/Subscribe/{id_Recipient} |
Single Update | Updates a single recipient based on mapped data fields (e.g. first name, last name, etc) | PUT /Console/Recipient/Detail |
Retrieve subscription status for a specific customer and list | Returns all subscribed recipients to a certain list | GET /Console/List/{id_List}/Recipients/Subscribed?filterby="Email.Contains('{Email}')" |
Webhooks
You can configure webhooks to enable a fast callback to your website every time a recipient changes the subscription status or any of the personal data fields (e.g. by filling in and submitting to an auto profile form). The callback method can be configured to include the recipient's details as the method parameter. Webhooks are managed by a worker process that is like a "frequent cron": you may experience some minutes of delay between the action and the corresponding callback. Bounces cannot be notified through webhooks.
Synchronize recipients between your application and MailUp (i.e. bulk import and/or export)
You may need to transfer a set of recipients, possibly with their data, from your application to MailUp; or vice-versa. Solutions that work well with a single recipient may not be suitable for big amounts of recipients, in this case, bulk solutions are required.
When planning a synchronization approach you must take care about how unsubscription is made. In particular, you should be aware that, when importing subscribers that are already present and unsubscribed in a specified MailUp list, unsubscription status is not changed, except for the cases in which you deliberately set an API option that forces subscription.
- If unsubscription is natively managed by MailUp via the "Unsubscribe" link normally nested in the email footer, forcing subscription should be considered only when an unsubscribed recipient specifically asks to be subscribed again
- If unsubscription is managed by an external system outside MailUp (i.e the "Unsubscribe" link in the email footer leads to an external site) then the external application runs as a "master" database and you should consider forcing subscription whenever you import recipients.
Several possible solutions are available.
Click here to expand and see available solutions and recommended methods
FTP based integrations
You can request your MailUp representative for an FTP Batch Process for massive data transfer using files CSV files. This feature can be used for very large amounts of recipients (this kind of process has been successfully tested with 4 million recipients in a single file).
Click here to know more about available FTP transfer types
You can request this feature to
Data transmission does not take place in real-time: it is usually configured on a daily or weekly basis, but for specific cases, even an hourly schedule can be considered )
FTP-based integrations can also be customized to import external campaign codes ( meant as customer’s application internal campaign or recipient identities ) without using personal data fields and to export email statistics with their reference to the external campaign code. This feature is not available with MailUp web services. More on this.
REST API
Rest API allows immediate and bidirectional import and export of recipients. Due to restrictions on the HTTP channel, you cannot pass more than 7MB as a payload of a single call. To overcome this limit, you may either split your list into multiple calls or provide a large file to be uploaded using FTP (the latter is the recommended option in case of a very large data set). The REST API is the only MailUp solution that allows the removal of a single recipient from a group.
Click here to expand for recommended methods
Action | Comments | REST Web Services |
Confirm successful communication with the API | Returns authentication information. | GET /Console/Authentication/Info |
Retrieve Lists | Retrieves all lists related information | GET /Console/User/Lists |
| Retrieve Groups | Retrieves groups for a certain list | GET /Console/List/{ID_LIST}/Groups |
Retrieve Fields | Retrieves the actual personal data field names along with ids. Useful for adding or updating subscribers’ personal information afterward. | GET /Console/Recipient/DynamicFields |
Bulk Subscribe | Subscribes a set of recipients to a list | POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Recipients or
POST /Console/Group/{ID_GROUP}/Recipients |
Bulk Unsubscribe | Unsubscribes a set of recipients from a list | POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Recipients?importType='asOptout' |
Bulk Update | Updates personal data fields of a set of recipients | POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Recipients or
POST /Console/Group/{ID_GROUP}/Recipients |
Retrieve the list of subscribers | Retrieves recipients that subscribed to a certain list | GET /Console/List/{ID_LIST}/Recipients/Subscribed |
Use confirmed opt-in (COI)
Management of new subscribers (single or bulk) is specified in the section above. In some cases, you may need to verify if the email addresses and allow subscription only to existing email addresses that belong to subscribers that want to receive messages from the MailUp list they subscribed to. This case is also called double optin and subscribers have to click on a specific link that is contained in an email message that is sent to them after their signup.
Double opt-in is useful when your application does not check if the email addresses are valid.
Click here to expand and see how you can implement COI
HTTP GET/POST and subscription forms
Two HTTP GET/POST methods, (subscribe.aspx and xmlsubscribe.aspx) use confirmed optin by default, they can be used for single recipients. After signup, the subscriber receives the default confirmation request message that is configured for the specified MailUp list. Please refer to the documentation of HTTP GET/POST for more details.
REST API
At the moment Rest API supports the COI process using a query string parameter called "ConfirmEmail" that applies to POST calls to Console/List/{ListID}/Recipient and Console/Group/{GroupID}/Recipient endpoints. When this parameter is set as true, the actual behavior can be different if a specified recipient already exists:
new recipient -> added as pending, confirmation request email is sent
already subscribed -> no change
already pending -> remains pending, confirmation request email is sent
already unsubscribed -> moved to pending status, confirmation request email is sent
Manage suppression lists (i.e. "do not email" lists of recipients)
Suppression lists are not natively supported by MailUp but you can create a dedicated group of recipients to exclude from sending. To automate the process, you can contact the MailUp support department and request for the configuration of an FTP-based integration with a batch process running hourly. This process has to be set to import in a new group ( where the destination group name matches the actual import file name) the recipients that are listed in the file to be imported. Then, when you access to MailUp admin console, you can schedule or fire your campaign to be sent to "all subscribers except for the recipients that belong to a certain group". It should be easy for you to identify the right group because it has the name of the imported file plus a timestamp.
Send transactional and other personalized emails
SMTP or API: it's your choice
Sending messages through MailUp from an external application allows you to take advantage of:
- The high reputation and scalability of the MailUp sending infrastructure
- Automatic bounce and feedback loop management
- Ability to include dynamic tags and dynamic content
- Ability to check the send status via API
You can send transactional emails:
Message personalization
You can personalize messages using either data that already exists in the MailUp recipient database (and merge tags that will retrieve that data) or bypassing value pairs to the system. This is supported using both the SMTP relay and the API.
Bulk email 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 can be used to send individual, personalized messages, such as transactional emails. However, if the goal is to send large amounts of messages or DEMs, the best practice to follow is described below.
Some possible scenarios are presented here - with the indication of the web services to be used - as examples of common scenarios. This is in no way an exhaustive overview of all the possible scenarios.
Please note that these cases do not talk about authentication and authorization, you should refer to the specific documentation of each technical solution for these details.
Case 1: email message and recipients exist in the MailUp admin console (click here to expand)
You may want to send a message to a group of users and both the message and the recipient's list are already available in the MailUp console.
REST API
- If the message has to be sent to all the recipients in a list you can call POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Email/{id_Message}/Send.
- If the message has to be sent to a group of a MailUp list you can call POST /Console/Group/{id_Group}/Email/{id_Message}/Send
The message, group, and list IDs can be found at the page Settings > Codes or they can be retrieved using API.
Case 2: not all recipients exist in the MailUp admin console (click here to expand)
Similar to Case 1, but in this case, a group of recipients has to be imported as well. Some of these recipients might be already subscribed to MailUp due to the previous signup to a newsletter, some others might be new subscribers. Here below some alternative solutions are listed, refer to Comparison Matrix to see how many recipients can be loaded with each solution.
REST API
REST API supports only sending to a single group or the whole list
- To import recipients into a group of a MailUp list you may use POST /Console/Group/{ID_GROUP}/Recipients, while POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Recipients can be used to simply import into a MailUp list without specifying a group. Use POST /Console/List/{ID_LIST}/Group if you also need to create a new group.
- the list of recipients can be provided in the request body or by specifying the name of a file you have previously uploaded via FTP. Refer to this page for more details
- Use the methods listed in Case #1 for sending an email message with REST API
FTP
You can use FTP-ZIP to upload a zip archive containing the list of recipients, the message content, and a file descriptor with the mailing instructions. After the upload, MailUp does all the rest, preparing and scheduling the mailing process. Since the whole process is fully asynchronous, you can add an email address in the file descriptor to be notified when the process is completed
LIST+
List+ allows you to enclose a list of recipients to the message to be sent (by using a file named one2many.import) instead of sending to lists or groups that are already present in MailUp. Click here for more information about this feature
Case 3: creating and sending a message via the MailUp API (click here to expand)
In some cases, it may be necessary to import into MailUp a message created using an external system.
REST API
With the REST API, you can fully handle message tags, images, and attachments.
- To create a message using POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Email, passing message content as a parameter. Check out this page to know more about the available options
- Use the methods listed in Case #1 for sending an email message with REST API
LIST+
With List+ you can create an email message with your email client or your application and send it to a MailUp specific email address. Depending on the specified address, this action can lead to
- save email message to MailUp and send it to all the recipients of a MailUp list
- save email message to MailUp and send it to all the recipients of one or more groups in a MailUp list
- save email message to MailUp without sending it
- save email message to MailUp and send it to a recipient for test purposes
This solution is very powerful if you want to work outside the MailUp console account and it has some interesting additional features like the automatic upload of images, support for dynamic fields, and sender verification. In addition, List+ allows you to enclose a list of recipients (by using a file named one2many.import) instead of sending it to existing lists or groups.
Case 4: cloning a message to track separate mailings (click here to expand)
Most customers need to track campaign results. When the same message is sent more than once (e.g. three different times, to three different groups), the results are linked to the message ID, not to the individual mailings. If you need to have distinct results for each mailing, you can make a copy of the message before sending it again.
REST API
You can use GET /Console/List/{id_List}/Email/{id_Message} to get message content and then you need to create an identical message with POST /Console/List/{id_List}/Email
Case 5: massive sending of personalized messages via Web Services (click here to expand)
If you are in need to send a high number of personalized messages through the API, please refer to the section of "Transactional emails" or contact us.
REST API and List+
You can create personalized sections within your email using the Dynamic Content feature and MailUp filters. Dynamic Content is not available with email messages sent with HTTP GET/POST API and SMTP+
Send Transactional or Bulk SMS
As for the email channel, the term "transactional SMS" is usually used to distinguish messages that do not belong to "Promotional" or "Bulk" categories.
Click here to expand and see available methods
REST API, FTP
The REST APIs offer reliable and scalable solutions for transactional and Bulk SMS. In addition, bulk sending can also be performed with the "SMS sending from CSV file" feature, which uses FTP data transfer to allow massive sending of highly personalized text messages.
The following table includes the recommended API methods to be used to perform certain tasks.
| Num. | Action | Description | REST API | FTP |
|---|
| 1 | Create a new text message | Create a new text message with dynamic fields (optional) that can then be used as an "existing message" from the actions listed below
(MESSAGE_ID is returned). A new message is also available on the MailUp console. | Createamessage |
|
| 2 | Single sending of EXISTING messages
to a specified recipient | A single existing text message is sent to a single recipient by specifying MESSAGE_ID and destination number.
A message shall be previously created and it can be customized using dynamic fields | SingleSend |
|
| 3 | TRANSACTIONAL single sending
to a specified recipient | High personalization of messages, suitable for high volumes, effective data aggregation, no need to save content on MailUp console | Transactional SMS using APIs |
|
| 4 | Bulk sending of EXISTING messages
to all subscribers or groups of them | A single existing text message is sent to many recipients (e.g. all list subscribers, one or more groups ...). by specifying
MESSAGE_ID and List/group identifiers
A message shall be previously created and it can be customized using dynamic fields | Sendtogroup/list |
|
| 5 | Bulk sending of NEW messages
to all subscribers or groups of them | A new text message (with or without dynamic fields) has to be created and sent to a list of subscribers.
| Createamessage + Sendtogroup/list |
|
| 6 | Bulk sending of NEW messages
to a list of recipients with a specific
text message for each recipient | In some cases, customization through dynamic fields could be not enough
A list of {recipient + message text for this recipient} has to be provided as input and all messages shall be sent as a single campaign.
This option has not had the side effects of option #5 and it also allows sending of completely different messages for each recipient. | N/A | SMS sending from CSV file |
| 7 | Immediate sending | For text messages to be sent as soon as possible | Createamessage + Sendtogroup/list | SMS sending from CSV file |
| 8 | Scheduled sending | For text messages to be sent at a specified time | Createamessage + Sendtogroup/list | SMS sending from CSV file |
| 9 | Sending of concatenated messages | When message length is higher than 160 characters (or higher than 70 chars if "Unicode" (use Unicode for non-western alphabets) | Createamessage + Sendtogroup/list | SMS sending from CSV file |
| 10 | Read Available credits | Retrieve the value of remaining credits (either as a whole at the account level or by list) | N/A |
|
| 11 | SMS Price | To know how many credits are used when sending an SMS in any country, visit SMS Credits & SMS Price |
|
|
Extractor display statistics
Email statistics are mainly the number and the details about opens and clicks, usually grouped by message. About SMS we can only know the delivery status and, in case of error, the error code.
Click here to expand and see available methods
REST API
REST API offers the best suite of MailUp statistics, also allowing filtered and paged searches. More on this page
FTP
A batch export can be configured to periodically export to a CSV file the statistics of email and/or SMS messages. Export frequency can be set for hourly to fourth weekly schedules. Contact us to request a batch export for your console account (non-standard configurations may require an extra fee). More on this page
Frontend
Frontend pages provide a reduced version of some statistics pages of the console account so that an external application can embed them. Available pages are similar to Summary Report and Opens report.