What is the Response Center?

The Postalytics Response Center is designed to synchronize campaign events or responses across various marketing platforms, all within Postalytics, without requiring direct integration.

With this feature, campaign related data is captured via webhooks from virtually any marketing platform that supports event-triggered webhook functionality. For example, if you've launched a postcard campaign through Postalytics, with the conversion event of a sale through your online store, the platform hosting your online sales can be used to transmit the sale response data over to your Postalytics campaign, where it’s captured and displayed on the Campaign Dashboard’s Response Center tab.

These events, or responses, are sent using a POST request to the endpoint URL of the Postalytics Response Center. You can generate the Response Center endpoint URL using the URL generation tool located in two places on the Responses tab of the Campaign Dashboard or during the campaign set up, in the Campaign Wizard. See instructions below.

During the setup of the Response Center endpoint URL, you’ll specify the event type (e.g., conversion event), designate the event source, and include an optional tag. 

Before Getting Started

Before you begin the set up, please ensure you have the following prerequisites:

  1. A Postalytics account - Free, Marketer, or Pro.

  2. A Postalytics Campaign of any type - Smart Send, Triggered Drip, or Automated File.

  3. A platform that supports event-triggered webhooks.

Instructions Applicable to All Platforms

Where Do I Create the Response Center endpoint URL?
There are three places within your account where you can create the Response Center endpoint URL.

Two of those are within the Postalytics Campaign Dashboard, in the Responses tab.

#1: In the Response Center Details section, just under the Activity section.

#2: Just below Response Center Details, in the Response Center URLs section.

The third place is within the Campaign Wizard, on the tracking set up page. 

Note: In this option the link will not be fully generated until the campaign is completed in the Campaign Wizard.

No matter the option used to generate a Response Center URL, the following steps to generate the URL will be the same.

Once you click on “Generate Response Center URL”, a popup will appear next. Complete the information within.

Click the blue button to continue (“Yes, I use other marketing tools to capture responses”)

Complete the form, using the sample and guidelines below. It's important to note the following:

  • Adding a tag is optional. 
  • The Drop ID will already be populated and should not be modified, unless there is a specific reason to do so.
  • The Drop ID will not be shown if the URL is being generated through the Campaign Wizard. Once the campaign has been created the system will automatically add this field.

Click "Generate URL” once completed.

Field Name

Description

Required

Name of the Response Source

This parameter allows setting the custom name for the source/marketing platform when necessary. Even though Response Center can grab the source name from the request header, some platforms may have inconsistent names like having a version number (i.e. Postmark 2.0 vs Postmark 3.0), which could change from time to time. Inconsistent source names may scatter the response metrics across the different but similar source names as the user tries to view them from the response dashboard.

Yes

Response Type (“What is the type of the response/event you are trying to sync?”)

This sets the type of event for the response received by this endpoint.

Yes

Is this a conversion event?

This sets the IsConversion flag for a response received by this endpoint.

Yes

Tag (“Assign a tag to help categorizing your response”)

This optional parameter allows you to put a tag to the responses received by this endpoint.

No

Drop ID

Prefilled by the system. Do not update unless the campaign has multiple drops and you are trying to sync event data for a specific drop.

Yes

If you’ve generated the URL from one of the places in the Response Center tab on the Campaign Dashboard, you can either copy it or save it for later. 

Clicking "Save for later” will take you back to the Campaign Dashboard Responses tab, where you will see the saved URL information in the Response Center URLs section.

If you are ready to insert the URL into the webhook in your platform, click “Copy to Clipboard” and scroll down to the “What’s Next” section in this article.

If you’ve generated the URL during the campaign creation, within the Campaign Wizard, the link will not be fully generated until the campaign is saved, or completed.

You can view the URL information, or delete it, using the icons to the right.

View saved parameters: To view the parameters you saved, click on the finder magnifying glass icon.

Copy the URL: Click to copy the generated URL. The URL won’t get copied if the campaign is not yet saved.

Delete the URL

What’s Next?

When you’re ready to move forward, copy the saved URL from the Response Center tab, in the Response Center URLs section by clicking “Copy URL”.

In your source platform, paste the copied Response Center URL into the destination URL in the webhook settings of your workflow.

If the settings allow custom request headers, make sure to include the following key/value pair:

  1. Key: Content-Type

  2. Value: application/json

Test the endpoint by sending a test request and then check your Postalytics Campaign Dashboard - “Responses” tab. 

You may need to refresh the page if you have not logged out.

When tested and everything looks good, activate your webhook workflow in your platform.

Now your Postalytics Campaign Dashboard Responses tab will show both your mailing’s online activity, along with the additional response activity sent in to the Response Center.