Developer evangelists FAQ

If you’re a regular at our tech events in Europe or the US, you may have met some of our Developer Evangelists (DevEv). They’re the guys walking around in the gold and black Mailjet tees, casually speaking in different languages; English, French, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript…

Yeah. Those guys.

Haven’t met them yet? Here’s a chance to get to know them and virtually pick their brains. We’ve pulled together some frequently asked questions the Developer Relations team often receives. Use them as an icebreaker at our next event or impress other attendees with your super-knowledge of Mailjet APIs!

**What is a Developer Relations team and what does the job of a Developer Evangelist involve?**

The Developer Evangelist profession only came to being a few years ago and is still not even very widely known within the tech community. To put it simply, we can break the role down by it’s name; developing and evangelizing. DevEv’s are typically very well versed both technically and socially.

First, a DevEv has a strong programming background and is fluent in at least one coding language. They are very familiar with how programs and systems work.

Next is pairing this with evangelism. DevEvs regularly attend events such as hackathons,conferences and meetups to build relationships with fellow developers, speak about Mailjet APIs and occasionally troubleshoot any issues users have. DevEv’s will also attend less technical events and be tasked to translate developer lingo into English. Because of this client facing aspect, DevEv’s often work closely with Sales and Marketing teams to better understand the target customer and pass on business leads they came across at an event.

But their job doesn’t just stop at in-person evangelizing! When not on the road, DevEv’s stay plugged in to the developer community online, monitoring latest trends and brand mentions on social media networks and forums. Some of our DevEv’s most frequented sites are Quora, StackOverflow, f6s and CrunchBase.

To give you a better look at how DevEvs work in action, check out the interviews of two of our very own DevEvs ninjas Tyler and Shubham. Don’t hesitate to say hi next time you see them at an event!

**How was Mailjet coded?**

Brace yourselves: Mailjet’s APIs are coded in… Free Pascal. Stay with us though! Don’t close the page just yet. There are at least two solid reasons why Mailjet uses this “outdated language” when cool things like Node.js now exist. The first reason is safety related. With Free Pascal, we can determine the size of your contact list far in advance and prevent hackers from injecting code into your email.

The second reason is flexibility. With Free Pascal, with have the freedom to develop everything from scratch. We develop our own tools, catering specifically to both our customer needs and team needs.

**What languages does Mailjet support?**

Even our product is written in Free Pascal, Mailjet’s APIs are available in most, if not all of the current languages (Ruby, Java, PHP etc.). We also offer easy-to-integrate plugins for Wordpress, Joomia and more! Check out more information on our Developers Page or onGitHub.

**How do you track statistics?**

One the coolest thing Mailjet offers (one of our personal favorites) is real-time data. Track your campaign performance in real-time by seeing what content was opened or clicked and which contact unsubscribed. These statistics are key in optimizing your email. We track this data through two foolproof ways:

- Each email you send has a transparent image of 1 pixel by 1 pixel embedded at the bottom. This image is associated with a URL that lets our servers know each time your message has been opened. Some of you may then think of Gmail’s new automatic image display and wonder if this feature is affected. Rest assured, even with this new implementation, we can track multiple opens. - All links you’ve created in your message will be automatically rewritten and attributed to a unique URL redirecting to our servers (similar to the transparent image above). So each time a recipient clicks on a specific piece of content in your message, we’ll be able to collect that data and report it back to you in a meaningful way.

**What’s next?**

The summer holiday season might be a slower season for meetups, but it’s a time for our DevEv team to focus on building cool projects! They’re busy writing our new API documentation, creating new code wrappers and even adapting for new languages. Keep your eyes peeled for some neat things coming out in the fall!