A new platform for Emma
Emma’s getting upgraded with a faster, more feature-rich platform and a handy API for your developers to use
We’ve been talking about it for a while, and we’re now beginning to roll out our new API — and the new Emma platform to support it.
More about the API
We’ve discussed the new API a bit previously, but to catch you up to speed, an API is an interface that a developer can use to get other programs talking with Emma. That means you can do things like add audience members and groups, pull response data, search your audience and edit member fields all from outside of Emma. If you follow our tech blog, you’ve heard Alex talking about our Salesforce integration, which relies heavily on this new API. Needless to say, this opens up many exciting avenues for both you as a customer and for Emma overall.
More about the new platform
Even if you’re not a developer, Emma’s new platform is going to offer some nice upgrades for everyone, with many more on the way. When your account is migrated to the new platform, you’ll immediately see improvements like:
- International character support
- Multiple test groups
- Faster send times
- Overall improved performance
And in the coming months, you’ll also see some new features being released on this new platform, including automated split testing, signup and survey notifications and social features for campaigns built into your account. All of these features take advantage of our new platform, and many more will follow. Exciting, right? Here’s a sneak peek so you can get a better idea of what’s to come.
What’s happening behind the scenes
To allow you to take advantage of the new system, we’ll be migrating all of our customers to this new Emma platform. That’s a major undertaking that entails moving all of your data from one system to another, one that has an entirely new structure to make these improvements possible. The new system will allow us to scale in a fast and stable fashion, and that means a more reliable and flexible Emma for everyone. This should be a seamless process for you, as each individual account can be moved in a matter of minutes, and downtime per account should be a fraction of that. Additionally, we’ll be doing these moves at non-peak hours to ensure we don’t cause any problems for customers. The entire process of moving all accounts will take some time, so we appreciate your patience as we make the big switch for everyone.
Want to be first in line?
We’ll be rolling out the new platform to all accounts over the next few weeks. As a side note, you’ll only see any new features we release if you’re on the new platform, so if you’d like your account to be upgraded sooner rather than later, let us know here.
If you’re a developer and would like to stay updated with the latest API news, let us know here.
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24 Responses to “A new platform for Emma”
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About the Author
Matt Thackston
Project manager for our application team, Matt loves a good beer and a good Coen brothers movie. He denies the perennial office rumor that he's working on an original screenplay called The Big Lebrewski.
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Emma is a member of the Email Sender & Provider Coalition and the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group.
Copyright © 2003 - 2012 Emma. All rights reserved.
It looks like you finally clearing path for IOS clients for Emma? Am I right?
Yes, that is exactly what this means! Creating an iPhone app is one of the many things this new API will allow us to do. Look for more information on that soon here on the blog.
Hi Matt,
Since Salesforce.com invested in HubSpot (the CMS/Marketing platform on which I maintain our website) I think it might be a very cool thing if you approached HubSpot to integrate into their email platform. Personally, I love HubSpot and take advantage of it all, but I like EMMA much better for email!
Thanks for the suggestion, Bonnie! We’ll put HubSpot on our list of possible integration partners to see if it’s a good fit. We’re expecting to see a lot of interesting integrations and uses for our API in the coming months, so stay tuned!
Will you be supporting Thai characters in the new platform?
Is there a charge for upgrading to the new platform? I want to sign us up for it sooner rather than later, but we are a nonprofit on a tight budget. We love Emma! It has been a great communication tool! thanks.
Yes, you will be able to input any foreign characters you like into Emma once you’re moved to this new system. We’re not translating all of Emma into other languages, but any text that you input can be from whatever character set you like.
Nope, this upgrade is completely free! Just sign up at the link above and we’ll make sure to get you on our early list. Glad to hear that Emma has worked so well for you!
Let us know when you’re doing the webinar! We’d like to participate! Especially excited about the split testing.
We’ll certainly have quite a few helpful resources in place and we’ll be sharing those as they become available. Thanks fo reading!
Matt: Much thanks for your new innovations which I am looking forward to.
Thanks for the kind words, Ray! We’re very excited about everything that’s coming.
So, will things change so much that it will take me longer to get used to where things are, and how to to things?
I’m excited about the upgrades, but I’m worried that it will take longer to do what I used to do quickly. Please put in pop ups and ‘helpful hints’ for those of us that don’t do well with change!
Hi Donna,
Don’t worry, most of what you see in your account will stay very much the same. This is mainly going to let us add new features more quickly, and we promise that we’ll have lots of help documentation and resources to guide you through those exciting new offerings.
Do you know if the soon-to-come iPhone app will also be available with different views for Agency clients and their sub-clients (non-emma branding)?
Since this will be available in the App Store, it will be branded so that it can be found there. That means that there won’t be an unbranded version of the iPhone app at this point. The new API would of course allow anyone to develop a mobile app for their clients if they so choose, but it’s not something that will be provided by the initial Emma iPhone app.
Any integration coming with survey monkey or pay pal?
Hi Nancy,
We have a survey tool in Emma, so there’s no planned integration with Survey Monkey just yet, but that’s not to say it couldn’t be done! The API we will be releasing would certainly allow for that, so you could certainly build an integration like that if you wanted.
Paypal is on our list, as we know that’s something many of our customers would use. However, we haven’t started any development on this yet. We’d love to hear more about how you’d like such an integration to work though, so please send us any thoughts you have, or just leave us another comment here.
Thanks!
What about Emma working on Android devices, not just iPhones?
Andrew, as a fellow Android user, I am eagerly awaiting an Emma Android app as well! We are starting with the iPhone app, but of course, Android is a huge platform and it’s certainly in our sights. I can’t give you a date on this, but it’s certainly something we’re considering.
The API documentation for import_single_member says: “group_ids (integer) – Optional. Add imported members to this list of groups.”
I can’t get this to work, and I suspect the documentation is wrong. How can an integer be a list of groups?
I’ve sent in a support question, but it’s been well over a week without an answer.
Any ideas anyone? Has anyone gotten around this issue?
Hi Paul, thanks for commenting here. I’m sorry for the delay in response, but I’m working on getting a developer to look at this for you. We’ll reply via email soon, should be by tomorrow. Thanks!
Emma and Agile Ticketing have many of the same customers in a specific lateral; art houses and historic theatres. I have been exploring the possibility of extending the Emma platform to our new customers who may not currently use email as a marketing effort. One challenge that we have is being able to easily scrub and import/export membership and theatre ticket buyer opt-in/opt-out data – to and from the ticketing application. With these API developments, do you think that there will be a capability whereby this function could be created on our end?
Hi Shane, thanks for stopping by. Our API would certainly allow you to add members, export members, opt out users and get lists of those opted out users to add to your system. You can read through our documentation here, which I think will explain everything you need. If you have further questions, let us know!