Bulk import contacts
Upserts up to 1000 contacts per call. Partial success is the contract: every entry is attempted, and the response reports how many failed rather than rolling the batch back over one bad address. Importing does NOT enroll anyone in anything — automations trigger on events, so a bulk import is silent.
bearerAuth writeAuthorizationBearer <token>An API key from the dashboard under Settings → API keys, sent as Authorization: Bearer aem_….
Authorization has two independent axes.
The scope is ranked — a key satisfies any requirement at or below its own tier:
read— see messages, contacts and metrics. Changes nothing, and cannot send.write— everythingreaddoes, plus managing templates, contacts, automations, segments and suppressions. This is what editing a template needs.admin— everythingwritedoes, plus sending configuration: domains, senders, webhook registration, kill switch, daily cap, brand.
There is no approve scope. It was a rung once; it is not one now, and a key requested with it is rejected.
The approval grant (can_approve) is a separate boolean, not a rung. Delivering mail to a real inbox needs write and the grant. Keeping them on separate axes is what makes the review gate a control rather than a convention: a key that may propose is not automatically a key that may approve its own proposal.
Give your application the lowest tier that works. Most need write and the grant — the dashboard mints that combination as Send + manage; Manage only is the same rung with the grant withheld.
Scope: write
Idempotency-Key?stringMakes a retry safe (1–256 chars, kept 24 hours). The same key with the same body replays the first success with Idempotency-Replay: true; the same key with a different body, or while the first request is still running, is 409 conflict. A failed request releases its key. Use a value tied to the thing you are creating, e.g. onboarding/user_42.
1 <= length <= 256application/json- body
contacts*array<>Up to 1000 per call. Partial success — see failed / failures.
1 <= items <= 1000Import finished (possibly partially).
application/json- response
imported?integerfailed?integerfailures?array<string>First 10 failures only.
curl -X POST 'https://sendandretain.com/api/v1/contacts/import' \ -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \ -d '{ "contacts": [ { "email": "[email protected]", "external_id": "user_8f21", "attributes": { "plan": "Pro" } }, { "email": "[email protected]", "tags": [ "beta" ] } ]}'{ "imported": 2, "failed": 0, "failures": [ "string" ]}