Transactional Injection Feed

Table of Contents:

The Transactional Injection Feed

While the feeds in the previous section: Ongage Feeds: HTML, RSS, XML and JSON use a URL to retrieve dynamic content from an external content/web server to populate outgoing email messages, with this feature you can specify the dynamic feed directly within the Transactional API call.

Use Cases

A powerful feature for eCommerce and travel

• This is a powerful feature for eCommerce and travel sites. With it one can send transactional emails of purchase summaries (e.g., purchase line items) or reservations details (e.g., hotel, room, itinerary line items, etc.).
• The feature enables marketers to use the same email message, yet each recipient will get a tailored message, with their personal reservation details, or purchase summary, based on the dynamic content values fed in from the API call feed.
• These Transactional API calls each with a tailor feed, are generated using data retrieved from the email marketer's back-end CRM, Accounting or Reservation platform. 

Setup Required to send Transactional emails using an API Injection Feed

Email Message

Your email message will include Dynamic List Fields (aka List Fields that get populated with values from your list), as well as Dynamic feed fields that will get populated from the feed data/values included in the Transactional API Request.

For example your email message might look like this:

Please note how the email message includes "{{ocx_feed{param=dynamic_feed}}}" where dynamic_feed is the name of the feed in the API call and contains the XML data as parameter in API request.

The XML FEED

For any particular contact, the XML feed to populate content in above email message will look like below.

<feed>
  <mailing>
    <blocks>
      <block>
        <name>blockName</name>
        <items>
          <item>
            <variables>
              <variable>
                <key>title</key>
                <value>Your Order Confirmation</value>
              </variable>
              <variable>
                <key>classSummary</key>
                <value>Here goes the summary of transaction</value>
              </variable>
              <variable>
                <key>classUrl</key>
                <value>www.domain.com/class/Destination-Link</value>
              </variable>
              <variable>
                <key>classAmount</key>
                <value>$123,123</value>
              </variable>
            </variables>
          </item>
        </items>
      </block>
    </blocks>
  </mailing>
</feed>

Transactional API Request

Finally, to send Transactional Email, you need to use POST /api/transactional/send End point. The example API request below includes the Email Message ID and the XML feed as a parameter.

{
"recipients":["abc@domain.com"],
"campaign_id":1234567890, 					// Transactional Campaign ID: If not used as parameter, Default Transactional Campaign will be used.
"message_id":1234567,						
"message_dynamic_fields":{
    "Customer_ID":"12345",
    "dynamic_feed":
    "<feed>
	<mailing>
		<blocks>
			<block>
				<name>blockName</name>
				<items>
					<item>
						<variables>
							<variable>
								<key>title</key>
								<value>Your Order Confirmation</value>
							</variable>
							<variable>
								<key>classSummary</key>
								<value>Here goes the summary of transaction</value>
							</variable>
							<variable>
								<key>classUrl</key>
								<value>www.domain.com/class/Destination-Link</value>
							</variable>
							<variable>
								<key>classAmount</key>
								<value>$123,123</value>
							</variable>
						</variables>
					</item>
				</items>
			</block>
		</blocks>
	</mailing>
	</feed>"
    }
}

 Note: The "dynamic_feed and "blockName" in the Email Message, need to match exactly how it is spelled in the API Request and XML Feed (and it is Case Sensitive!).

For the above setup, the transactional Email received in the Inbox, will look similar to the following screenshot:

Additional Notes

1. The List Field value added in API request above under "message_dynamic_fields" will overwrite the value stored in List field of any contact while sending the Transactional Emails only. The original value stored in list field will still remain as it is after the API request.
2. You can also use IF-THEN-ELSE conditions in the email message and send dynamic content to end users based on the List field value either populated in API request or already stored in List.