Mailchimp

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 to set up manual and automated campaigns.

This includes:

• Thank you messages to new customers.
• Automated followup 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. Grant addon access to your admin user role group (typically Full Administrator).
4. Navigate to Addons > MailChimp.
5. Follow the instructions to finish the setup process.

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 the key to your clipboard. We also recommend giving the API key a label in your MailChimp account (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 Create > Automations.
3. Click Get Started.
4. Click Check out Classic Automations.
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.

New Customers

New customers will be added to MailChimp with their opted in or out status determined depending on their marketing e-mails selection during account creation (either via the registration page or when placing their first order). Information on configuring marketing e-mail automation can be found at Marketing Emails Automation

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. Go to the WHMCS Admin Area and 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 to.
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.