Provides developers with a brief introduction to the system
Emails
Emails are of course the messages we are sending out. We have 3 types:
- Campaign Emails - these are emails sent to a batch of users on a one off basis such as a newsletter
- Recurring Emails - these are emails typically sent every day to a batch of recipients. Such as birthday emails, a request a review email or a 30 day reminder email. Typically the content of these emails stays the same every day, but the recipients change each day.
- Trigger Emails - these are instantaneous emails sent to a single recipient on the receipt of the API command
Campaigns/Split Tests
A Campaign or Split Test is a level above emails, used for running A/B tests. This level ensures that any emails within this are controlled at who they go to. A recipient will only be able to receive a single one of these emails, simplifying the list management for the user.
Folders
Maxemail has a folder system for organising any item or asset. Any number of sub-folders can be used to ensure the interface is tidy and free of clutter. Permissions can also be set on folders to restrict which users can access or edit the contents within the folders. When creating emails, lists or other assets using the API there is usually a simple option to specify a folder ID of where to create the item.
Lists
Lists are a group of email addresses. For example you may have a list for your newsletter, a list for press contacts and so on. Recipients can appear on any number of lists, however the email address and their associated profile data is only stored once in Maxemail. Therefore you can never have a scenario where an email address has 2 different first names.
Maxemail automatically de-dupes on import, plus when using multiple lists on a campaign.
Maxemail also has the concept of include and suppression lists. Include list types are people you wish to send to, exclude people you wish to not send the email to. Exclude lists always take priority over include lists.
Lists can be maintained in Maxemail by appending to them rather than the need to create multiple lists each time you load new data in.
Profile data
Profile data is sets of fields you wish to store data about an email address to, such as name, newsletter preferences and other useful information used to personalise and target emails with.
Unsubscribes
Maxemail has functions to automatically handle unsubscribes. There are 2 types; Local and Global. Inserting into an email a local unsubscribe link will only unsubscribe them from the list the email was sent to. If this is used then you should ensure you maintain the list in Maxemail rather than load new lists each time, otherwise you will keep sending to unsubscribed recipients.
If you use the Global Unsubscribe it will unsubscribe the recipient from all lists, and add them to a Global Suppression list that is used on all email sends. This is the recommended method.
Segments
These are rules which are used to select who within your list the email should be sent to. They are optional, but provide the user with greater control. Examples might include:
- Only send where 'Gender' field = 'Male'
- Only send where 'Registration Date' = 3 days ago
Developers can take advantage of segments as they allow Maxemail to make decisions on who to send to, rather than filtering the data that is pushed into Maxemail.
Snippets & Dynamic Content rules
Snippets are blocks of HTML and Text that can be inserted into an email. These are usually used as part of a dynamic content rule where different snippets are merged into the email depending on what you know about each recipient.
Datatables
The Datatables feature allows the user to define their own set of fields in a similar way to profile fields, however they are not tied in a one-to-one connection to a recipient. Because of this, the user must also define their own unique key combination. Although this is enforced, the system uses its own identifier for each row, which is referred throughout this document as the row_id.
System field name
The system field name referenced in the documentation is the identifier used for a Datatable field when getting or setting Datatable row data. It is constructed by prepending "field_" to the field ID. Eg. field_123.