Transactional email allows you to send email via an API. Like marketing emails, Tarvent provides robust reporting for Transactional emails, giving you insight into deliverability, engagement, and more. Checkout our blog on the differences between marketing and transactional emails if you have questions.
Let me forewarn you now. This blog uses some technical terms, as the target audience is developers. However, marketers trying to implement transactional email will still get plenty of good information from this blog. Additionally, you can forward this blog to your programmer, who may be looking for a quick solution to implementing transactional email within your websites, mobile apps, internal apps, and more.
Why use Tarvent?
You can often send an email in code without a problem. It's simple, right? However, it gets a lot more complicated when you must ensure your emails are delivered, kept out of SPAM folders, and, more importantly, generated engagement reporting. Additionally, depending on the application that is sending the email, you may have to deal with various security issues getting connected to either the receiving mail server or a mail server that will eventually send your email.
Tarvent eliminated all the complexities by allowing you to make a simple API call over HTTP, which is typically never an issue, even on internal servers, to a more enterprise environment. Additionally, with Tarvent's functionality, you get all the benefits of email authentication, ensuring you have the best possible chance of delivering your emails, especially in a high-volume environment.
You can learn more about transactional deliverability in our blog that discusses in detail how to get the best deliverability possible for your transactional email.
The Tarvent API
Now you're to the exciting part. Well, if you're a developer, it's exciting. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are created using an architectural style called REST. APIs that use REST are considered RESTful. Unfortunately, there is no rest with a RESTful API because, for each task you need to perform, there is typically a different URL you must point to, pass in data specific to the entry point, and then hope the data coming back is standardized.
We've coded RESTful APIs for years and appreciate that Facebook decided to create GraphQL. GraphQL-basedAPIs have a single entry point. This entry point allows you to retrieve information (queries) and update information (mutations).
Additionally, our GraphQL API provides documentation and a robust set of GraphQL tools tightly integrated with our API, allowing you to build your queries and mutations (aka data modification calls).
The best part about the Tarvent API is that 100% of the Tarvent application uses the same API you have access to. With so much functionality, you can create an entirely new user interface for our application. That takes "white-labeling" to a whole new level.
The code generator
We invite you to look at the Developer portal for the API. The portal is where you can see all the Tarvent API's various capabilities. You can go here to see what options are available when creating a transaction. I don't know about you, but seeing all the possible options for creating a transaction can be over whelming. That's where the code generator shines. Instead of reading all the documentation, you can go over to the code generator. You will need an active account with a transaction plan to use it. You can signup for an account today!
Once you have access to the code generator, it's as easy as adding your content, providing the applicable data based on the features you want to use, and clicking the "Generate code" button.
Code languages supported
As of this writing, we support C#, Node.js, PHP, Python, Go, and Java. We will continually add more languages based on developer requests. In addition to supporting the programming languages above, some of you may not be too familiar with GraphQL and prefer REST. We've got you covered! We have code generation for both GraphQL and REST. Yes, we built a REST call just for you REST guys who still need to give it a rest. I know, I'm punny.
So many API parameters
Even when you only need to fill out a form, it can still be challenging. We get it. We're right there with you. That's why every single form field on the code generator includes the following:
In other words, we leave no rock unturned. We want to ensure you know exactly what each field is for and how it's used. You can hover over the help for each field, and we'll give you everything.
Are tooltips annoying? We feel you! Once you generate code, we provide documentation for every property in an easy-to-read table with everything we included in the help tooltip, all on one screen.
Possible API errors
Yes, we provide all the possible error codes the API can return. Yes, all of them. There are several, and we want to ensure you're never surprised. Moreso, we want to ensure you can make your code as robust as possible, handling any error code that comes your way.
Are you starting to feel like you've been through your pain before? Oh, we have! What's better is that our developers built the code generator for developers without being limited by the business telling us we're taking too long to create an "awesome" generator with everything you need.
Integrating our code
That's the easy part. Well, it is easier than reading all of the documentation to understand the many parameters and objects we have to provide you with a robust solution.
We did you a solid by creating variables at the top of the generated code, so you don't have to get in too deep. Set the variables, and the code will generate the HTTP call without you having to worry.
Now for a bit of honesty about something you may love or hate. The code generator builds a GraphQL string that is passed to our API in the body of the HTTP call. We did this for two reasons. Working with many enterprise-level customers, we know importing a 3rd party library into your code can take an act of God unless you're not religious. Getting approval for a 3rd party library may take a lot of patience. How's that?
We'd love to create a simple library. For now, we made the generated code nothing more than a string that uses commonly available intrinsic libraries to the language of choice.
The additional benefit is that there is no "magic" behind the scenes to drive you crazy trying to figure out what it's doing. Black boxes may be nice, but seeing all the magic is fantastic!
We also made it easy to stick our code in a function so you can isolate our code as much as possible. Ultimately, you can copy/paste our code into your project, set some variables, and send transactional emails quickly. You can have everything configured and running in as little as 10 minutes. That said, we'd suggest planning 2-3 hours for production-ready code to ensure you've got everything rock solid and well-tested. I know. I should be selling you on how fast it is, but honesty is the best policy, and we hate skewing things to sound good.
Content management within code
Examples of transactional emails include simple system notifications or more complex emails with dynamically built content, such as an order confirmation email. While Tarvent offers templates that allow easy content editing, complicated requirements may require code-generated content or an internal content management system to manage and create content. With Tarvent's transactional email API, you can generate content in multiple mime types and pass in that content with each transaction. This control over content gives you unlimited flexibility over the content sent in the email. Tarvent will never change your HTML other than convert link URLs to trackable links and add a transparent image just before the close body tag to track opens. However, both changes can be avoided by simply turning off open and link click tracking with the transaction parameters.
Content management with templates
If you're the developer, we're sure you know all too well the number of requests made to change your code for a minor content change. Yes, it isn't enjoyable. Marketers, we feel your pain! When you need a simple change but can't make it yourself, you may have to create a ticket in Jira or some other platform and hope it gets priority so you can add a comma, period, or some additional small copy that only takes a second to do.
Tarvent's template system is convenient and gives the right people control over the content. When using templates, the content is stored in Tarvent, providing anyone with access to a drag-and-drop editor or code editor for the savvier users. In either case, developers never have to change code. Once you edit and save your template, the next transactional email will include any changes you make. However, if new variable data is added to the template, a developer must ensure that the latest variable data are added to the transaction API call.
Templates take a lot of pressure off the developer while making it extremely easy to update content on the fly, knowing changes are immediate. Depending on your change management procedures and development environments, some opt for multiple templates for dev, QA, staging, and production environments, allowing changes to be isolated for testing. Either way, templates are a great option to reduce dependencies and change implementation times.
Conclusion
The conclusion is that Tarvent's transactional email API code generation is fantastic! Right? Well, we think it is. In all seriousness, the code generator was built for developers by developers to reduce significantly the amount of time it takes to integrate transactional email capabilities into your new or existing website, mobile apps, internal apps, and more.
You can read the documentation or use the code generator. The generator allows you to modify every setting, edit the content, add in variable data, and more by simply filling out form fields. After completing the form, the generator will generate code in several languages that take all the settings into account. The generated code lets you see the programmatic version of your settings to send out a transaction that meets your needs. You can even test the code within the generator and send a transaction with a button click. It's that easy!
When you’re looking for an email marketing platform, marketing automation platform, and email API for sending transactional emails, Tarvent has everything you need in a single solution that ties everything together. Try Tarvent for free for 14 days and see how Tarvent can take your marketing to the next level with ease at a price any size company can afford.
Cliffs Notes Version
Transactional email makes sending and reporting email activity easy to integrate into various websites, mobile apps, and internal apps. Using the Tarvent API (Application Programming Interface), programmers can write code to generate a call to Tarvent to send these transactional emails.
While programmers write code often, learning a new API can be time-consuming. To drastically decrease or even eliminate that learning time, Tarvent has created a code generator and visual editor that allows programmers to configure a transactional email API call. Tarvent will generate the necessary code in seconds.
The visual editor includes inline help, describing every setting in detail to answer virtually any question developers may have.
Once the code is generated, it can be copied and pasted into the developer's application within minutes. Once integrated, transactional emails can be set. Within Tarvent, you will have access to various reports that clearly show how well your transactional emails are performing. You can take this further by using a group name or tags within your transactional email to get group or tag-level reporting.
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