Sending Transactional Email from FileMaker with BrilliantConnect

Have you tried sending a lot of marketing or notification emails for your company using your internet provider’s email sending account and failed? This approach is fraught with problems and limitations. Your hosting company can shut you down because you look like a spammer… or if the email goes through, it ends up in the user’s junk mail folder. You are also limited to plain-looking non-HTML emails.

The answer is to use a cloud-based email sending service. You would use FileMaker to create app-generated emails (or transactional emails) in response to a user’s behavior. They play a critical role in acquiring and retaining customers. You can also get powerful email analytics of bounce, open, and click-through rates that can indicate if there are any serious email delivery issues. These email sending services are designed to help digital marketers and application developers send marketing, notification, and other transactional emails. They are reliable, cost-effective services for businesses of all sizes that use email to keep in contact with their customers.

Making FileMaker talk to these services is not a trivial programming challenge. You must learn their API (Application Programming Interface) and then create the appropriate calls using FileMaker functions to get them to work. Then if the service changes their pricing model, updates their API, or doesn’t work out for some reason you need to reprogram your solution.

The BrilliantConnect (formerly fmFlare) transactional Email module solves these issues. You can call the BrilliantConnect email module with a standard script and specify the service you want to use to send the email. If you need to change the service, just call with a different parameter. You don’t need to reprogram your solution. We take care of the complex integration programming challenges and you look like a star in getting your solution to do what you need to run your business. We’ve done the hard work for you.

There are many services available. BrilliantConnect currently supports (or soon will support) the following Email sending services:

• Client (the default email app on your computer)
• SMTP
• Mandrill (a MailChimp add-on)
• SparkPost
• Mailgun – coming soon
• Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) – coming soon

Mailgun, for example, is a great place to start because it allows for 10,000 free emails every month.

Even if you don’t use one of these services yet, you can use the BrilliantConnect Email module for free to send directly from the FileMaker Client or built-in SMTP options. Then, if you want to change to a full-fledged web service in the future, you’re all ready to. Calls to BrilliantConnect are simple editing of a JSON statement in FileMaker scripts.

BrilliantConnect is just a FileMaker file…not a plugin. You can send formatted emails. It also takes advantage of FileMaker 17s ability to send multiple email attachments.

Take a look at a demo of how you can use the BrilliantConnect module below.

We’re demoing this BrilliantConnect module at DevCon 2018.