Suggestion on how to execute this email program

[Michael_McGowa1]

I need to create an automated email that goes out once a week. It sounds straight forward but I am stumped on the best way to execute this.

This email would go out to all members informing them of new activities created the previous week.

The email would contain information on the activities and links to our website going directly to the activity.

The activities are created by another team member and the information is stored in our backend.

I envision the program to work like this:

• The other team member inputs the new activity information in our backend.
• On the day before deployment, an API trigger populates a table with the new offers and their information.
• On the day of deployment, a smart campaign checks to see if there is new information in the table and if yes, sends the email inserting the offer information from the aforementioned table into the email, and if no, no email is deployed from this program for that week.

What is the best way of executing this?

• I cannot have a Custom Object table because the offers are not linked to a person.
• I do not want an API call for every person that would receive the email because that could potentially cause us to hit our limit on API calls in a day.

Thoughts? Any help would be appreciated.

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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I cannot have a Custom Object table because the offers are not linked to a person.

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FYI, Custom Objects don't need to be connected directly to people. But you're still right that you can't use a CO, because a a second-level or disconnected CO can't be used in Velocity, which you would need to output the offer in the email.

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The other team member inputs the new activity information in our backend.

• On the day before deployment, an API trigger populates a table with the new offers and their information.
• On the day of deployment, a smart campaign checks to see if there is new information in the table...

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It's the second bullet here that's the actual problem.

The first bullet can be handled by populating a {{my.token}} via the API — use a JSON array — which can then be parsed in Velocity.

The second bullet suggests that a Smart Campaign can check if a {{my.token}} has changed, which it can't. So your client app would need to not only update the token, but also schedule the campaign, using the API.