Our external imports (to services like Salesforce, Wufoo, and Capsule) has always been a manual, one-time import. This is fine is you just start using our service and would like to bring in everyone from another service. The problem is that every time you update someone in the external service, that change would not come across to Mautive until you re-imported. This became a redundant task which reduced the effectiveness of the feature.
So we spent some time updating the import section to allow for automated imports from external services. When you connect to your external service you’ll have the option to let us check for new updates on a recurring basis (a few times an hour or week), or to use the old approach (non-recurring, one-time import):
You can still supply import filters to narrow down the data, and we’ll automatically check if the subscriber already exists (if so, their details are updated).
We’ve also removed the mapping step (where you mapped fields from the external source into Mautive fields) in order to simplify the entire process. Instead we hand-pick as many relevant fields coming from the external source and automatically create custom fields (and map the data) in Mautive for you:
Notice in the screenshot above that the new custom fields are labeled with the external source name to start the personalization tag (IE: batchbook-about). This makes it easy to identify the field related to a specific external import source. When the import process runs again (on a recurring basis) it will continue to update those custom fields with data. This speeds up the entire process and let’s you focus on crafting relevant email campaigns for your subscribers.
Initially we’re allowing this new automatic import to happen for four external sources, and plan to add the rest of them very soon:
- Nimble
- Contactually
- Capsule
- Batchbook
You will know if a particular source is set up for automatic import if it shows “Auto-Import Capable” beneath it:
For any source that does not have automatic import enabled, you can still perform an import using the old approach (manual, one-time, and ability to map fields on your own).
You can also connect multiple external accounts (using different users or API keys) per source. For example, if you have multiple Contactually accounts (or users with different API access), they can all be added through a single Mautive account and have an automatic import set up for each.
We are excited to release this improved method of importing subscribers, and we’ll be on the watch for any initial issues, so please let us know if you have any questions, problems, or feedback!
Note: We are slowly rolling this out to all accounts so it might not be available immediately.
