How to Connect Mailchimp to ChapterPulse: One-Click Newsletter Publishing

ChapterPulse can push newsletter and announcement drafts directly to Mailchimp as draft campaigns, complete with your subject line, preview text, sender name, and fully branded HTML. This eliminates the copy-paste workflow entirely: no more copying HTML from ChapterPulse and pasting it into Mailchimp's code editor.

This guide walks you through the full setup, from generating your Mailchimp API key to pushing your first newsletter draft campaign. If you are already connected and just need a refresher on the week-to-week workflow, skip ahead to Step 3: Push a Newsletter.

One important thing to understand upfront: ChapterPulse never sends emails. It creates draft campaigns in Mailchimp. Your chapter admin always selects the audience, verifies the content, and sends or schedules the campaign from within Mailchimp. This keeps your existing email workflow intact while removing the manual HTML step.

Before You Start

You will need three things in place before connecting Mailchimp to ChapterPulse:

• A Mailchimp account with Manager or Admin role. You need this level of access to generate API keys. If you are a regular Author or Viewer in Mailchimp, ask your chapter's Mailchimp admin to generate the key for you.
• Your Mailchimp unsubscribe URL set in ChapterPulse. Go to Settings > Newsletter > Unsubscribe URL and paste your chapter's Mailchimp unsubscribe URL. The push will be blocked if this is missing, because every email campaign needs a working unsubscribe link.
• The draft:edit and draft:send permissions in ChapterPulse. You need draft:edit to compose and modify drafts, and draft:send to push them to Mailchimp or mark them as sent. If you do not have both, ask your chapter admin to grant them through the team settings.

Step 1: Generate a Mailchimp API Key

The API key is how ChapterPulse authenticates with your Mailchimp account. You only need to do this once. The key grants full account access scoped to the generating user's role. Mailchimp does not support limited-scope keys, so store it securely and do not share it over email or chat.

1. Log in to Mailchimp.
2. Click your profile icon in the bottom-left corner, then click Account & billing.
3. Open the Extras dropdown in the top navigation, then click API keys.
4. Click Create A Key.
5. Give the key a descriptive label (e.g. "ChapterPulse") so you can identify it later.
6. Copy the key immediately. Mailchimp only shows it once. It looks like abc123def456-us21.
7. Note the suffix after the hyphen (e.g. us21). This is your Mailchimp data center. You do not need to configure it separately because ChapterPulse reads the data center automatically from the key.

Step 2: Connect Mailchimp in ChapterPulse

With your API key copied, switch to ChapterPulse and open the connections settings. You need the settings:connections permission to access this page.

1. Go to Settings > Connections.
2. Scroll to the Mailchimp section.
3. Paste your API key into the API key field. The placeholder shows the expected format: abc123-us21.
4. Click Validate to confirm the key works. You will see a green "API key is valid" confirmation if everything is correct.
5. Optionally configure the default sender fields:
   • From name: The sender name on your campaigns. If left blank, it defaults to your organization name in ChapterPulse.
   • Reply-to email: Where replies go. This is optional; you can also set reply-to per campaign directly in Mailchimp.
6. Click Save at the top of the page.

After saving, the API key is encrypted at rest and never visible again in the UI. The connections page shows a masked field with a Change button, confirming that a key is configured without revealing it. If you ever need to change the key, click Change, enter the new one, and save.

Step 3: Push a Newsletter to Mailchimp

Once the connection is set up, the week-to-week workflow is straightforward. You compose your PMI chapter newsletter or announcement in ChapterPulse as usual, then push it to Mailchimp with one click.

1. Compose your newsletter or announcement in the editor. Add your sections, write your content, and preview the result.
2. When the draft is ready, click Push to Mailchimp (the violet button in the toolbar). If you have unsaved changes, ChapterPulse saves automatically before pushing.
3. A confirmation dialog appears with two options: Open Mailchimp & mark sent or Open Mailchimp. Either choice opens the draft campaign in a new browser tab.
4. In Mailchimp: select your audience or segment, verify the content in the preview, and schedule or send.

The draft campaign includes your subject line, preview text, from name, and the complete HTML output. Everything you configured in ChapterPulse carries over.

Editing After a Push

You do not need to worry about creating duplicate campaigns if you push more than once. ChapterPulse tracks the Mailchimp campaign ID for each draft.

• If you make changes and push again, ChapterPulse updates the existing draft campaign in Mailchimp instead of creating a new one.
• The button text changes to "Update in Mailchimp" after the first push, so you always know whether you are creating or updating.
• If the campaign is no longer a draft in Mailchimp (already sent, scheduled, or cancelled), ChapterPulse automatically creates a new draft campaign on the next push.

Copy HTML Fallback

The Copy HTML option is always available as a fallback, even when the Mailchimp integration is connected.

• Click the small dropdown arrow on the right side of the Push to Mailchimp split button to access it.
• The copied HTML is the same Mailchimp-compatible output that the push sends via the API.
• This is useful if you need to paste the HTML into a different email tool, or if the Mailchimp API is temporarily unavailable.

Permissions

Two ChapterPulse permissions are involved in the Mailchimp integration. They are intentionally split so that an admin can configure the connection once and other team members can use it without needing access to credentials.

• settings:connections is required to configure the Mailchimp API key, from name, and reply-to email in Settings > Connections.
• draft:send is required to push or update a draft campaign in Mailchimp.

A team member with draft:send but without settings:connections can still see and use the Push to Mailchimp button, as long as an admin has already configured the integration. They do not need access to the API key itself.

Troubleshooting

If something goes wrong during setup or while pushing a draft campaign, here are the most common issues and how to resolve them.

"Set your Mailchimp unsubscribe URL in Newsletter Settings before pushing"

ChapterPulse blocks the push if no unsubscribe URL is configured. Go to Settings > Newsletter and add your Mailchimp unsubscribe URL. This is a one-time setup; once saved, you will not see this error again.

"No Mailchimp API key configured"

The integration has not been set up yet. An admin with the settings:connections permission needs to add the API key in Settings > Connections. See Step 2 above.

"Failed to decrypt Mailchimp API key"

This typically happens after an encryption key rotation on the ChapterPulse backend. The fix is straightforward: an admin re-enters the Mailchimp API key in Settings > Connections and saves. The new key is encrypted with the current encryption key.

"Invalid API key" during validation

Double-check that the key was copied completely, including the data center suffix (e.g. -us21). Mailchimp API keys are only shown once at creation. If the key was truncated or partially copied, you will need to generate a new one in Mailchimp.

Push button is disabled or grayed out

The most common cause is that the draft is read-only because it has already been marked as sent in ChapterPulse. Read-only drafts cannot be pushed or updated. If you need to send a revised version, duplicate the draft and push the new copy.

Questions?

If you run into an issue not covered here, or if you are evaluating ChapterPulse for your PMI chapter and want to see the Mailchimp integration in action, the fastest way is a short demo. We will walk you through the full workflow, from composing your email newsletter to seeing the draft campaign appear in Mailchimp.

Book a Demo