Pull from Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform that tracks details related to email campaigns (opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, spam complaints, and recipients) and email subscriber lists (active, unconfirmed, bounced, and deleted subscribers), and other details.

This topic describes the steps that are required to pull subscriber list data to Amperity from Campaign Monitor:

  1. Get details

  2. Add courier with empty load operation

  3. Get sample NDJSON files

  4. Add feeds

  5. Add load operations

  6. Run courier manually

  7. Add to courier group

Get details

Campaign Monitor requires the following configuration details:

  1. The customer’s Campaign Monitor client ID.

  2. The customer’s API key.

  3. Identifying which endpoints in the Campaign Monitor API will be used to provide data to Amperity.

  4. A sample for each file to simplify feed creation.

Hint

You can find Campaign Monitor account details after you log into Campaign Monitor.

The Campaign Monitor client ID and API key is associated with your account username. Click your username, then Account settings, and then API keys. Generate an API key (if there isn’t one already), copy the API key and client ID.

Campaign Monitor API

Campaign Monitor API endpoints provide data to Amperity as NDJSON files.

API Endpoint

Filename

Active subscribers

active-subscriber.ndjson

Bounced subscribers

bounced-subscriber.ndjson

Deleted subscribers

deleted-subscriber.ndjson

Campaign bounces

bounce.ndjson

Campaign clicks

click.ndjson

Campaign opens

open.ndjson

Campaign recipients

recipient.ndjson

Campaign Spam complaints

spam.ndjson

Campaign unsubscribers

unsubscribe.ndjson

List statistics

subscriber-list.ndjson

Sent campaigns

campaign.ndjson

Unconfirmed subscribers

unconfirmed-subscriber.ndjson

Unsubscribed suscribers

unsubscribed-subscriber.ndjson

suppression.ndjson

Add courier

A courier brings data from external system to Amperity. A courier relies on a feed to know which fileset to bring to Amperity for processing.

Tip

You can run a courier without load operations. Use this approach to get files to upload during feed creation, as a feed requires knowing the schema of a file before you can apply semantic tagging and other feed configuration settings.

To add a courier for Campaign Monitor

  1. From the Sources tab, click Add Courier. The Add Courier page opens.

  2. Enter the name of the courier. For example: “Campaign Monitor”.

  3. From the Plugin drop-down, select Campaign Monitor.

  4. The “campaign-monitor” credential type is selected automatically.

  5. From the Credential drop-down, select Create a new credential.

  6. Enter the API key, and the client ID.

  7. Under Campaign Monitor Settings set the load operations to a string that is obviously incorrect, such as df-xxxxxx. (You may also set the load operation to empty: {}.)

    Tip

    If you use an obviously incorrect string, the load operation settings will be saved in the courier configuration. After the schema for the feed is defined and the feed is activated, you can edit the courier and replace the feed ID with the correct identifier.

    Caution

    If load operations are not set to {} the validation test for the courier configuration settings will fail.

  8. Click Save.

Get sample files

Newline-delimited JSON (NDJSON) is a data format for structured data that defines the structure of JSON data using lines as separators. Each line in a NDJSON file is a valid JSON value.

Every Campaign Monitor file that is pulled to Amperity must be configured as a feed. Before you can configure each feed you need to know the schema of that file. Run the courier without load operations to bring sample files from Campaign Monitor to Amperity, and then use each of those files to configure a feed.

To get sample files

  1. From the Sources tab, open the menu for a courier configured for Campaign Monitor with empty load operations, and then select Run. The Run Courier dialog box opens.

  2. Select Load data from a specific day, and then select today’s date.

  3. Click Run.

    Important

    The courier run will fail, but this process will successfully return a list of files from Campaign Monitor.

    These files will be available for selection as an existing source from the Add Feed dialog box.

  4. Wait for the notification for this courier run to return an error similar to:

    Error running load-operations task
Cannot find required feeds: "df-xxxxxx"

Add feeds

A feed defines how data should be loaded into a domain table, including specifying which columns are required and which columns should be associated with a semantic tag that indicates that column contains customer profile (PII) and transactions data.

Note

A feed must be added for each file that is pulled from Campaign Monitor, including all files that contain customer records and interaction records, along with any other files that will be used to support downstream workflows.

To add a feed

  1. From the Sources tab, click Add Feed. This opens the Add Feed dialog box.

  2. Under Data Source, select Create new source, and then enter “Campaign Monitor”.

  3. Enter the name of the feed in Feed Name. For example: “ActiveSubscribers”.

    Tip

    The name of the domain table will be “<data-source-name>:<feed-name>”. For example: “Campaign Monitor:ActiveSubscribers”.

  4. Under Sample File, select Select existing file, and then choose from the list of files. For example: “active-subscriber.ndjson”.

    Tip

    The list of files that is available from this drop-down menu is sorted from newest to oldest.

  5. Select Load sample file on feed activation.

  6. Click Continue. This opens the Feed Editor page.

  7. Select the primary key.

  8. Apply semantic tags to customer records and interaction records, as appropriate.

  9. Under Last updated field, specify which field best describes when records in the table were last updated.

    Tip

    Choose Generate an “updated” field to have Amperity generate this field. This is the recommended option unless there is a field already in the table that reliably provides this data.

  10. For feeds with customer records (PII data), select Make available to Stitch.

  11. Click Activate. Wait for the feed to finish loading data to the domain table, and then review the sample data for that domain table from the Data Explorer.

Add load operations

After the feeds are activated and domain tables are available, add the load operations to the courier used for Campaign Monitor.

Example load operations

Load operations must specify each file that will be pulled to Amperity from Campaign Monitor.

For example:

{
  "ACTIVE-SUBSCRIBERS-FEED-ID": [
    {
      "type": "truncate"
    },
    {
      "type": "load",
      "file": "active-subscribers-file"
    }
  ],
  "RECIPIENTS-FEED-ID": [
    {
      "type": "load",
      "file": "recipients-file"
    }
  ],
  "CAMPAIGNS-FEED-ID": [
    {
      "type": "truncate"
    },
    {
      "type": "load",
      "file": "campaigns-file"
    }
  ],
  "SUBSCRIBER-LIST-FEED-ID": [
    {
      "type": "load",
      "file": "subscriber-list-file"
    }
  ]
}

To add load operations

  1. From the Sources tab, open the menu for the courier that was configured for Campaign Monitor, and then select Edit. The Edit Courier dialog box opens.

  2. Edit the load operations for each of the feeds that were configured for Campaign Monitor so they have the correct feed ID.

  3. Click Save.

Run courier manually

Run the courier again. This time, because the load operations are present and the feeds are configured, the courier will pull data from Campaign Monitor.

To run the courier manually

  1. From the Sources tab, open the    menu for the courier with updated load operations that is configured for Campaign Monitor, and then select Run. The Run Courier dialog box opens.

  2. Select the load option, either for a specific time period or all available data. Actual data will be loaded to a domain table because the feed is configured.

  3. Click Run.

    This time the notification will return a message similar to:

    Completed in 5 minutes 12 seconds

Add to courier group

A courier group is a list of one (or more) couriers that are run as a group, either ad hoc or as part of an automated schedule. A courier group can be configured to act as a constraint on downstream workflows.

To add the courier to a courier group

  1. From the Sources tab, click Add Courier Group. This opens the Create Courier Group dialog box.

  2. Enter the name of the courier. For example: “Campaign Monitor”.

  3. Add a cron string to the Schedule field to define a schedule for the orchestration group.

    A schedule defines the frequency at which a courier group runs. All couriers in the same courier group run as a unit and all tasks must complete before a downstream process can be started. The schedule is defined using cron.

    Cron syntax specifies the fixed time, date, or interval at which cron will run. Each line represents a job, and is defined like this:

    ┌───────── minute (0 - 59)
│ ┌─────────── hour (0 - 23)
│ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
│ │ │ ┌────────────── month (1 - 12)
│ │ │ │ ┌─────────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday)
│ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │
* * * * * command to execute

    For example, 30 8 * * * represents “run at 8:30 AM every day” and 30 8 * * 0 represents “run at 8:30 AM every Sunday”. Amperity validates your cron syntax and shows you the results. You may also use crontab guru to validate cron syntax.

  4. Set Status to Enabled.

  5. Specify a time zone.

    A courier group schedule is associated with a time zone. The time zone determines the point at which a courier group’s scheduled start time begins. A time zone should be aligned with the time zone of system from which the data is being pulled.

    Note

    The time zone that is chosen for an courier group schedule should consider every downstream business processes that requires the data and also the time zone(s) in which the consumers of that data will operate.

  6. Set SLA? to False. (You can change this later after you have verified the end-to-end workflows.)

  7. Add at least one courier to the courier group. Select the name of the courier from the Courier drop-down. Click + Add Courier to add more couriers.

  8. Click Add a courier group constraint, and then select a courier group from the drop-down list.

    A wait time is a constraint placed on a courier group that defines an extended time window for data to be made available at the source location.

    A courier group typically runs on an automated schedule that expects customer data to be available at the source location within a defined time window. However, in some cases, the customer data may be delayed and isn’t made available within that time window.

  9. For each courier group constraint, apply any offsets.

    An offset is a constraint placed on a courier group that defines a range of time that is older than the scheduled time, within which a courier group will accept customer data as valid for the current job. Offset times are in UTC.

    A courier group offset is typically set to be 24 hours. For example, it’s possible for customer data to be generated with a correct file name and datestamp appended to it, but for that datestamp to represent the previous day because of the customer’s own workflow. An offset ensures that the data at the source location is recognized by the courier as the correct data source.

    Warning

    An offset affects couriers in a courier group whether or not they run on a schedule.

  10. Click Save.