Bronto Blog

An API is a powerful tool that can open the door to high ROI email programs, but for the uninitiated it can be confusing trying to understand what they are really all about. Today we’re going to go over what an API is, and how you can leverage it to make your life easier, and your emails better.

What does API Mean?

API stands for Application Programming Interface, but I like to describe it as a language. It’s the language that is used to talk to a specific application. I’m not talking about an actual programming language, like C or Java. In the generic sense, this language allows you to provide commands or ask questions of the application at hand.

There’s some lingo that goes along with APIs that you should be familiar with as well. There are several different technologies that APIs are often based on, this includes SOAP, REST, and RPC. I’m not going to get into all those acronyms, that’s a whole other blog post, but you’ll probably see them thrown around when you talk API. Also, each time you talk to an application via an API it’s called a Making a Call, e.g. you would make a call to the api to upload a list.
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