Mail Merge

Elastic Email supports mail merge functionality so that you can send a single job but support multiple recipients with personalized emails.

Using this technique you can define an email template which contains special fields such as {firstname}, {lastname} or many others and send personalized emails in a very efficient way to your clients. For example:

Dear {firstname} {lastname},

This is our monthly newsletter. We hope you have been enjoying our service. You can access your account at {link}.

To use the mail merge you need to make two calls to the api. One to upload a CSV (comma separated values) data source file using the upload attachments api and a second call to the send api with the specified datasource.

Step 1) Create a CSV file like the following:

"ToEmail","FirstName","LastName"
"email1@email.com","Joe","Plumber"
"email2@email.com", "Jackie","Smith"

The first column of the data must be ToEmail and will be used as the recipients of the merged email. The other columns represent the data fields that you can use in your email. You can have as many columns as you need. If you have the header FirstName you can include that in your email template with {FirstName} and all references to that field will be replaced before sending.

Step 2) Call the attachments upload api to upload the CSV file.

To upload your attachment do a HTTP PUT of your attachment file to:

https://api.elasticemail.com/attachments/upload?username=yourusername&api_key=yourapikey&file=test.csv

Step 3) Call mailer send with the datasource value set:

To use the send command POST to https://api.elasticemail.com/mailer/send with the following form values:

username=your account email address
api_key=your api key
from=from email address
from_name=display name for from email address
subject=email subject
body_html=html email body [optional]
body_text=text email body [optional]
data_source=your csv file name (eg: test.csv)

If sent correctly you will receive a response like:

f74b9f96-f89a-4cfe-813f-5f86df1cb37f

This is the transaction ID of your send job. You can use this transaction ID to check on the statistics of the given job using the Get Status api.

Your email will be sent to each email address in the CSV file and the data will be merged with the CSV data.

Note: There is a limit of 100000 emails / uploaded CSV file for larger jobs please split into separate calls.

Code Samples

C#

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Specialized;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Net;

namespace BasicElasticEmailSend
{
        public static string ElasticEmailMailMerge()
        {
            string username = "your username";
            string apiKey = "your api key";

string csvLocation = @"D:\test.csv";
            string dataSourceName = "test.csv";

string csv = File.ReadAllText(csvLocation);
            MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(csv));
            WebRequest request = WebRequest.Create("https://api.elasticemail.com/attachments/upload?username=" + username + "&api_key=" + apiKey + "&file=" + dataSourceName);
            request.Method = "PUT";
            request.ContentLength = stream.Length;
            Stream outstream = request.GetRequestStream();
            stream.CopyTo(outstream, 4096);
            stream.Close();
            WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
            string attachID = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream(), Encoding.UTF8).ReadToEnd();
            response.Close();

WebClient client = new WebClient();
            NameValueCollection values = new NameValueCollection();
            values.Add("username", username);
            values.Add("api_key", apiKey);
            values.Add("from", "you@yourdomain.com");
            values.Add("from_name", "Your Name");
            values.Add("subject", "This is a test of Email Templates");
            values.Add("body_html", "Dear {FirstName} {LastName}, templates are here!");
            values.Add("body_text", "Dear {FirstName} {LastName}, templates are here!");
            values.Add("data_source", attachID);

byte[] result = client.UploadValues("https://api.elasticemail.com/mailer/send", values);
            string res = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(result);
            return res;
        }
}

PHP

class BaseElasticEmail
{
	
	private $apiKey   = "PUT_YOUR_KEY_HERE";
	private $userName = "PUT_YOUR_USERNAME_HERE";
	
	function __construct($userName=NULL,$apiKey=NULL)
	{
		if($userName != NULL) $this->userName = $userName;
		if($apiKey != NULL)   $this->apiKey = $apiKey;
	}

/**
	 * Sending simple email
	 * @param string $from
	 * @param string $fromName
	 * @param string $to
	 * @param string $subject
	 * @param string $bodyText
	 * @param string $bodyHTML
	 */
	function sendMail($from, $fromName, $to, $subject, $bodyText, $bodyHTML)
	{
		$res = "";
		$data = "username=".urlencode($this->userName);
		$data .= "&api_key=".urlencode($this->apiKey);
		$data .= "&from=".urlencode($from);
		$data .= "&from_name=".urlencode($fromName);
		$data .= "&to=".urlencode($to);
		$data .= "&subject=".urlencode($subject);
		if($bodyHTML) $data .= "&body_html=".urlencode($bodyHTML);
		if($bodyText) $data .= "&body_text=".urlencode($bodyText);

$header = "POST /mailer/send HTTP/1.0\r\n";
		$header .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
		$header .= "Content-Length: " . strlen($data) . "\r\n\r\n";
		$fp = @fsockopen('ssl://api.elasticemail.com', 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);
		if(!$fp)
		{
			return "ERROR. Could not open connection";
		}
		else
		{
			fputs ($fp, $header.$data);
			while (!feof($fp))
			{
				$res .= fread ($fp, 1024);
			}
			fclose($fp);
		}
		return $res;
	}

/**
	 * Uploading attachments
	 * @param string $content Content of the file to upload
	 * @param string $fileName
	 */
	function uploadAttachment($content, $fileName)
	{
		$res = "";
		$header = "PUT /attachments/upload?username=".urlencode($this->userName)."&api_key=".urlencode($this->apiKey)."&file=".urlencode($fileName)." HTTP/1.0\r\n";
		$header .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
		$header .= "Content-Length: " . strlen($content) . "\r\n\r\n";
		$fp = @fsockopen("ssl://api.elasticemail.com", 443, $errno, $errstr, 30);
		if(!$fp)
		{
			return "ERROR. Could not open connection";
		}
		else
		{
			fputs ($fp, $header.$content);
			while (!feof($fp))
			{
				$res .= fread ($fp, 1024);
			}
			fclose($fp);
		}
                $res=substr($res,-9);
		return $res;
	}

/**
	 * Sending emails with Elastic MailMerge
	 * @param string $csv Content of the CSV File to send
	 * @param string $from
	 * @param string $fromName
	 * @param string $subject
	 * @param string $bodyText
	 * @param string $bodyHTML
	 */
	function mailMerge($csv, $from, $fromName, $subject, $bodyText, $bodyHTML=NULL)
	{
		$csvName = 'mailmerge.csv';
		$attachID = $this->uploadAttachment($csv, $csvName);
		$res = "";
		$data = "username=".urlencode($this->userName);
		$data .= "&api_key=".urlencode($this->apiKey);
		$data .= "&from=".urlencode($from);
		$data .= "&from_name=".urlencode($fromName);
		$data .= "&subject=".urlencode($subject);
		$data .= "&data_source=".urlencode($attachID);
		if($bodyHTML) $data .= "&body_html=".urlencode($bodyHTML);
		if($bodyText) $data .= "&body_text=".urlencode($bodyText);

# Demo :
require_once 'BaseElasticEmail.php';
$ee = new BaseElasticEmail();

$csv  = '"ToMail","Title","FirstName","LastName"'."\n";
$csv .= '"smith@example.com","Mr","Alexander","Smith"'."\n";
$csv .= '"dupon@example.com","Miss","Sarah","Dupon"'."\n";

$text = 'Hello {Title} {LastName}, your first name is {FirstName}.'

$res = $ee->mailMerge($csv, "demo@example.com", "Demo", "Demo Mail Merge", $text);
var_dump($res);