Web Services Presentation

Dialog Insight's web services are REST APIs accessible through HTTPS using an API key as an authentication (requests and responses are in JSON format). Web services allow developers to integrate the platform with their own systems and applications. Using APIs, you can automate contact management, trigger marketing campaigns, synchronize data, and retrieve real-time statistics. In this article, you will get a general overview of web services, how they work, and common use cases.

Several CRUD actions can be performed when calling web services:

• Read or modify data (contacts, segments, campaigns, etc.)
• Connect Dialog Insight to third-party systems (CRM, ERP, e-commerce)
• Automate recurring marketing tasks
• Retrieve reports and performance indicators

Endpoint Main Categories

Contact Management

Manipulation of the platform’s most central resource: contacts.

• Create a contact (Contacts.Merge)
• Update contact profiles (Contacts.Merge)
• Search or filter contacts (Contacts.Get)

Segmentation and targeting

Work on lists and segments to target your mailings.

• List the available segments 
• Get the contacts of a segment
• Create or update a dynamic segment

Campaigns and communications

Campaign management (emails, SMS or Push notifications).

• Create a campaign
• Trigger a campaign
• Plan or trigger a sending
• Get statistics from a campaign

Data and statistics

Data extraction to analyze your marketing actions.

• Retrieve reports for clicks and views
• Get the mailing history per contact

Fields Nomenclature

To call a field with the web services, you must add a prefix before the internal ID of the field. 

To find the internal ID of a field, go to the field list: Project → Data Management → Project Fields.

Contact Fields

Prefix: f_ 

Example: f_FirstName

Projet Key

Prefix: key_f_ 

Example: key_f_EMail

Opt-in Fields

Prefix: optin_ 

Example: optin_Newsletter

Typical Use Cases

Here are some concrete examples of calls that you could set up from your first developments.

1. Subscription for a newsletter: When a visitor submits a form, your site calls the API to create or update their profile in Dialog Insight. The newsletter opt-in status is also updated. 

2. Client data update: A change in a contact's data (name, address) in your CRM triggers an API call to sync the data to the profile in Dialog Insight.

3. Reminder integrated into an automated campaign: Your e-commerce system detects an abandoned cart and calls an automated campaign in Dialog Insight. The campaign triggers the sending of an email or SMS, as a reminder for the products left in the cart.  

4. Internal dashboard: An in-house interface queries the Dialog Insight API to display the opening rate of the latest campaigns in real time.

Best Practices To Follow

• Start small: Test your calls in a development environment before aiming for massive syncs.
• Use the official documentation: Each API entry point is documented with its parameters and examples.
• Manage the call responses: Plan the handling of the response and errors for HTTP status codes (e.g. 400, 401, 404, 500).
• Respect the limit of calls: Avoid intensive call loops that can impact performance, and don't make mass calls that would exceed the sending limits of the web services.