Mailchimp Integration
Connect Articfly to your Mailchimp audience and turn AI-generated articles into Mailchimp campaigns. Each publish creates a new campaign in your account, saved as a draft by default so you can review every email before it ships. Tick the "Send immediately" checkbox if you want it to go straight to your full audience.
Prerequisites
- ›A Mailchimp account on any paid or free plan. Mailchimp's Marketing API 3.0 is available across all plans.
- ›A Mailchimp API key, generated in your account profile (instructions below).
- ›A verified sender domain in Mailchimp. Without a verified domain, Mailchimp blocks the actual send. Articfly catches this at connect time when possible and surfaces a clear message.
- ›Active Articfly account, sign up at app.articfly.com.
Connecting Your Mailchimp Audience
Three steps. Generate an API key, paste it, pick an audience and sender details.
Generate a Mailchimp API key
In Mailchimp, click your profile icon and go to Account & billing → Extras → API keys. Click Create a key, name it Articfly, and copy the generated key. It ends with a datacenter suffix like -us20 or -us6. Articfly uses this suffix to route API calls to the correct Mailchimp datacenter automatically, you do not need to enter it separately.
Paste the key in Articfly
In the Articfly dashboard, go to Integrations → Mailchimp. Paste the key and click Continue. Articfly validates the key against Mailchimp, detects your datacenter from the key suffix, and fetches your audiences.
Pick audience, from-name, and reply-to
Choose the audience (Mailchimp calls these "lists") you want campaigns to go to. Enter the from-name (e.g. Acme Newsletter) and a reply-to email on a verified Mailchimp sender domain. Click Connect Mailchimp. Every campaign Articfly creates uses this audience and these sender details.
What the Integration Does
Articles Become Campaigns
Articfly turns each article into a Mailchimp campaign, not a blog post. The campaign sits in your Mailchimp account ready for review or send. Each publish creates a brand new campaign, Articfly does not edit previously created ones.
Draft by Default
Campaigns are saved as drafts by default. You review the email in Mailchimp's campaign editor and click Send when ready. This is intentional, accidental sends to your full audience are expensive to recover from.
Opt-In Send Immediately
Tick the Send to subscribers immediately checkbox on the article publish screen and the campaign goes out the moment Articfly creates it. Use this only when you're sure, sent campaigns cannot be edited or deleted via the API.
Automatic Datacenter Routing
Mailchimp shards accounts across datacenters (us6, us20, us21, and so on). Articfly extracts the datacenter from your API key suffix and routes every call to the right base URL. You never touch this configuration.
HTML Email Body
Mailchimp accepts HTML campaign content. Articfly sends the article body as HTML, Mailchimp renders headings, paragraphs, lists, and inline images using your account's default template wrapping.
Subject Line from Article Title
The article title becomes the campaign subject line. Edit the title on the Articfly article detail page before publishing if you want a punchier subject than the headline of the article itself.
No First-Name Personalization (Yet)
Articfly does not set a to_name merge field on campaigns. Mailchimp's to_name is a display label, not a real merge tag, and a literal *|FNAME|* in the inbox preview breaks the look. If you want first-name greetings, add them in Mailchimp before sending.
Encrypted Key Storage
Your Mailchimp API key is encrypted at rest using AES-256-GCM. Articfly only decrypts it server-side at the moment of publish, and authenticates to Mailchimp using HTTP Basic with the key as the password.
Security Notes
- ›A Mailchimp API key gives full account access, audiences, campaigns, subscribers, templates. Treat it like a password.
- ›All API calls use HTTPS to your datacenter host (e.g.
https://us20.api.mailchimp.com/3.0) with a 30-second timeout. Articfly never logs the raw key. - ›To fully revoke access, delete the API key in Mailchimp under Account & billing → Extras → API keys. Disconnecting in Articfly clears the local copy but does not invalidate the key on Mailchimp's side.
Troubleshooting
"Verify your sender domain at Mailchimp"
Mailchimp blocks campaigns sent from unverified domains. Go to Mailchimp → Account & billing → Domains and verify the domain of the reply-to email you used at connect time. Once verified, publish again from Articfly, no need to reconnect.
"Mailchimp API key invalid"
Either the key was deleted in Mailchimp or you pasted only the random portion without the datacenter suffix. A valid key looks like abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890-us20. Generate a fresh one in Mailchimp and reconnect.
I edited the campaign in Articfly but Mailchimp still shows the old content
Articfly does not update existing Mailchimp campaigns. Each publish creates a new campaign. If you republish an article after editing, you get a fresh draft in Mailchimp, the old campaign stays untouched. Delete the old draft manually if you don't need it.
Can I delete a sent Mailchimp campaign from Articfly?
No. Mailchimp's API only allows deletion of draft campaigns, sent campaigns are permanent. Articfly can delete drafts on your behalf, but anything that has actually gone out to subscribers stays in your Mailchimp account for reporting and audit purposes.