Without Data Extension ? Possibilities in Exacttarget

Question

We do have a form LP and its URL is situated in External webpage .We use the Form LP's to capture the leads in Exact-target. We don't have DE enable to our account and ET says and i quote

"Data extensions requires your account to have the Automation Studio -module or for the account itself to be an Advanced subscription.However, even without Automation Studio, you should be able to safely use lists which will have the same effect and won’t impact any actions."

Customer asked if we could make it work without DE(they wanna avoid expenses offcourse).

Wondered how its doable without DE ? where we define the field values and run upsert function to add/update values against to (on submit of the form) ??

NEW Updates :I could be able to create a subscriber to the list with the below code (used @xavier advice code as reference too) .But i can't be able to update the subscriber (with the InvokeUpdate function) if the email already exist??

SET @subscriber = CreateObject("Subscriber") SetObjectProperty(@subscriber,"EmailAddress",@var_emailaddress)

SET @attribute=CreateObject("Attribute")
SetObjectProperty(@attribute,"Name","FirstName")
SetObjectProperty(@attribute,"Value",@var_firstname)
AddObjectArrayItem(@subscriber, "Attributes", @attribute) 

SET @attribute=CreateObject("Attribute")
SetObjectProperty(@attribute,"Name","LastName")
SetObjectProperty(@attribute,"Value",@var_lastname)
AddObjectArrayItem(@subscriber, "Attributes", @attribute)

Set @options = CreateObject("UpdateOptions") Set @save = CreateObject("SaveOption") SetObjectProperty(@save,"SaveAction","UpdateAdd") SetObjectProperty(@save,"PropertyName","Attribute") AddObjectArrayItem(@options,"SaveOptions", @save)

SET @list = CreateObject("SubscriberList")

SetObjectProperty(@list, "Status", "Active") SetObjectProperty(@list, "ID", "1005425") SetObjectProperty(@list, "Action", "create") AddObjectArrayItem(@subscriber, "Lists", @list)

SET @statusCode = InvokeCreate(@subscriber, @statusMsg, @errorCode, @options)

IF @statusCode == "OK" THEN Redirect('http:') ELSE Redirect('http:')

Any pointers are appreciated.

thx

Answer 1

You could call an HTML page hosted in ET from your form in the external web page. The page should include all AMPscript needed.

You can do it like this:

   <form action="URL to the AMP script page hosted in Exact Target" method="post">
    ...
   </form>

In the AMPscript page all the code to create the new subscriber should be included. There are some examples in help.exacttarget.com All needed fields could be created as Subscribers attributes, then Data extensions are not needed. In the long term if there are many different types of leads you will end having a very long list of attributes.

Regarding how to add the subscriber to a list, please take a look at the below piece of code:

SET @list = CreateObject ( "SubscriberList" ) 
SetObjectProperty ( @list, "Status", "Active" ) 
SetObjectProperty ( @list, "ID", "XXXXXXXX" )  /*List ID*/
SetObjectProperty ( @list, "Action", "create" ) 
AddObjectArrayItem ( @sub, "Lists", @list ) 

Where @Sub is the variable that keeps the new subscriber to be created. This code has to be inserted before the piece of code that creates the subscribers. See an example below:

SET @statusCode = InvokeUpdate ( @sub, @statusMsg, @errorCode ) 

IF @statusCode !="OK"  THEN
    @message = Concat ("Not able to create Subscriber, errorcode is: ", @errorcode) 
    RaiseError (@message) 
ENDIF