Revision as of 19:06, 22 July 2021

MailChimp integration is available in WHMCS 7.3 and later.

What is MailChimp?

MailChimp is an email marketing and automation platform. It is free to use for up to 2,000 subscribers and allows up to 12,000 emails per month.

The WHMCS MailChimp integration uses MailChimp's ecommerce API to synchronize customer, order, and abandoned cart data with your MailChimp account. This allows you to use MailChimp's advanced ecommerce automation to set up manual and automated campaigns.

This includes, but is not limited to:

• Thank you messages to new customers.
• Automated follow-up messages on abandoned carts.
• Onboarding or drip-feed campaigns to new customers.
• Attempts to recapture lapsed customers who haven't bought anything recently.
• Rewards for your best customers (based on order count or total spent).

Signup

If you do not yet have a MailChimp account, you can create a free account here.

Initial Setup

To set up integration with MailChimp:

1. Navigate to Configuration () > System Settings > Addon Modules or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > Addon Modules.
2. Locate the "'MailChimp'" module and click Activate.
3. Assign your admin user role group (typically Full Administrator) access to the addon.
4. Navigate to Addons > MailChimp.

The first time you access the MailChimp addon you will be guided through a setup process that connects your WHMCS installation with your MailChimp account.

Creating a MailChimp API Key

You must provide a MailChimp API Key as part of this process. If you do not have a MailChimp account, you can create a free account here.

To create a MailChimp API key:

1. Log in to MailChimp.
2. Navigate to Account > Extras > API keys.
   
3. Click Create A Key. A new key will be automatically generated for you.
4. Copy this key to your clipboard. We also recommend giving the API key a label inside your MailChimp account so you know what it is used for (API Key for WHMCS in the example below).
   
5. Enter the API key in WHMCS. You will see this screen the first time you access the MailChimp addon after activating it.
   

Creating an Automated Campaign

To create an automated campaign:

1. Log in to your [MailChimp account].
2. Navigate to Campaigns > Create Campaign.
3. Choose Create an Email.
4. Select the Automated tab.
5. Choose the E-Commerce options.
   
6. Select your desired email from the list of premade options or click Custom to create a new campaign using advanced mode. For example, to create an onboarding automation for new customers, you would choose these options:
   1. Select Follow up on purchases. This option sends email after an applicable purchase according to your settings.
      
   2. Select Product category. This option only sends email for purchases of specific types of product.
      
7. Enter a name for your new automation (in this example, Follow up on SSL purchase).
8. Choose the mailing list that you connected with your WHMCS installation. The campaign overview will display.
9. Click Edit Trigger to choose the applicable product category.
   
   This example uses SSL Certificates as the product category.
   
10. Click Save.
11. Design your campaign's emails. You must create at least one.
    

Importing Existing Customers

The MailChimp WHMCS integration will track customer signups and ecommerce transactions immediately upon activation. To add your preexisting customers to your MailChimp mailing list, you can perform an import.

To do this:

1. From the Admin Area, navigate to Reports > More.
2. Under Exports, click Clients.
3. Select the fields to export. We recommend First Name, Last Name, Company Name, and Email Address.
4. Click Filter to generate the report.
5. In the top-right corner, click Tools and choose Export to CSV. This allows you to download a list of your customers in the CSV format.
   
6. Go to MailChimp.
7. Navigate to Lists and choose the list you want to import customers into.
8. Navigate to Add contacts > Import contacts.
9. Choose the CSV or tab-delimited text file option.
10. Click Next.
11. Follow the displayed instructions to upload the CSV export and complete the import process.