Emailer Provider GetResponse Releases Robust API Library

GetResponse, an email marketing solution, announced a new application programming interface (API) aimed at helping small-to-medium sized businesses integrate their platforms with the company’s email marketing tools.

The new GetResponse Developer Zone includes some 30 API hooks that make it possible to add GetResponse functionality to all of the systems that an ecommerce merchant depends on, including databases, content management systems and the ecommerce platform itself.

Developer Zone

This means that merchants using GetResponse can programmatically create dynamic emails when buying events take place. These dynamic emails are, in essence, an advanced mail-merge feature that uses a single template with multiple customizable fields ready for conditional content such as date and time, demographics, automated currency converter, or preference based marketing.

For example, a welcome email sent when a site visitor registers for a newsletter can include or exclude conditional content based on user preferences—a feature too advanced for the email tools that come with many ecommerce platforms and requiring more integration than would be possible without an API.

Another example might include a time based feature like a sale that ends in two days. The email announcing the sale might go out only when customers register for an alert, so that some customers would get the notification when the sale started, while others would get it hours later. The GetResponse API would dynamically adjust the content to reflect how much time was left in the sale.

Addressing the Problem of Integration

The GetResponse APIs and other similar APIs from other companies help SMB merchants address the real problem of integration.
Often online retailers use an ecommerce platform, a separate accounting system, a separate order management tool, and a separate email marketing tool. These systems rarely share data, as they would in an enterprise seller’s operation. The Developer Zone is a step toward bring these systems together and using them collectively to market to customers more effectively.

APIs Are Popular

While the Developer Zone is new, APIs are not. In fact, they are used extensively in ecommerce and in email marketing. There are, for example, APIs available for MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Lyris, to name three.

APIs do, of course, differ in quality, so merchants will be well served to select the solution that best fits their needs.