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Connect Constant Contact

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Connecting Constant Contact lets your Modules look at your contacts and past campaigns, add people to a list, and write a draft email for you to review. Everything runs through an app you create in your own Constant Contact developer account, so you stay in control of what it can do.

What your Modules can do

  • Find a contact by email address, or by name or company, and see whether they are subscribed.
  • List your contact lists and how many active contacts each one has.
  • List your recent email campaigns with how they did: sent, opened, clicked, unsubscribed and bounced.
  • Add a person to a list, creating the contact if needed. This waits for your approval.
  • Save a draft email campaign with a name, a subject and a message. This waits for your approval too.

What your Modules cannot do

  • Send a campaign, or schedule one. A draft stays a draft until you open it in Constant Contact, choose who receives it and send it yourself.
  • Add someone who has unsubscribed. If a person opted out, they have to sign up again themselves.
  • Delete contacts, lists or campaigns.

You are responsible for consent

Email laws such as CAN-SPAM, and Constant Contact's own terms, require that you have permission to email everyone on your lists. Raileon cannot check that. Only ask your Modules to add people who agreed to hear from you, such as someone who filled in your sign-up form or asked to join your newsletter. The approval card reminds you of this each time. Do not add people from a purchased or scraped list.

Before you start

You need a Constant Contact account with at least one verified sender email address (drafts use it), and access to the Constant Contact developer portal. Draft campaigns use your account's own business name and verified address as the sender.

Connect Constant Contact

  1. Open Apps

    In your dashboard, go to Apps in the left sidebar and select Connect on the Constant Contact card. Keep the redirect URL shown there handy.

  2. Create an application

    In the Constant Contact developer portal, choose My Applications, then New Application. Give it a name. Under OAuth2 settings, choose Authorization Code Flow and Implicit Flow and Rotating Refresh Tokens.

  3. Add the redirect URL

    Paste the redirect URL from the Raileon card into the application's redirect URI field and save. It must match exactly.

  4. Create a client secret

    In the application, generate a client secret and copy it right away, because it is only shown once. The application's API key is your Client ID.

  5. Paste the details and connect

    Paste the API key and the client secret into Raileon and select Save & connect. Sign in to Constant Contact and allow access.

  6. Confirm it is connected

    The Constant Contact card shows Connected.

Raileon asks for four permissions: reading your account (for the verified sender), your contacts and lists, your email campaigns and their results, and a long-lived sign-in so the connection keeps working without asking you again.

Disconnect Constant Contact

Open Apps, find the Constant Contact card, and select Disconnect. You can also delete the application in the developer portal to cut off access right away.