Connect Mailchimp, with your own key
Make an API key in Mailchimp, paste it, and your assistant can read your audiences and reports, add and tag contacts, and draft campaigns. It never sends one.
You will be able to let your assistant work with your Mailchimp audiences and campaigns, with a key that is yours and a send button that stays yours.
Mailchimp connects with an API key you make in your own account. You paste it on the Connections page, and your mineral checks it with one real read of your account before it keeps it. About three minutes.
Once it is connected, your assistant can work with your audiences, contacts, draft campaigns and reports, in your chats and in your scheduled jobs. A Monday job that tells you how last week's newsletter did is the kind of thing this is for.
Why your own key, and why on your mineral#
Mailchimp does not publish an official connection for assistants that covers audiences and campaigns. The services that offer one host it themselves, which means your audience passes through their machines.
So this one runs on your mineral. Your key is stored there, the small program that talks to Mailchimp runs there, and your contact list never passes through Crads AI or anyone else on its way to your assistant.
What it can and cannot do#
| It can | It cannot |
|---|---|
| List your audiences, tags and saved segments | Send or schedule a campaign |
| Find contacts and read a contact's details | Delete a contact, an audience or a campaign |
| Add a contact, or update one's name and fields | Change an existing contact's subscription status |
| Add and remove tags | |
| Draft a campaign: audience, subject and content | |
| Change a campaign's content while it is still a draft | |
| Send you a test of a draft | |
| Read a sent campaign's report: opens, clicks, unsubscribes |
It never sends a campaign. A newsletter to your whole list cannot be taken back, so your assistant drafts it and sends you a test, and you press Send in Mailchimp.
New contacts are added as "pending". Mailchimp emails them to confirm, and they receive nothing until they do. If you tell your assistant someone has agreed to hear from you (they signed up at a market stall, say), it can add them as subscribed instead. That is your call to make: the law in most countries, and Mailchimp's own rules, need you to have that consent.
Before you start#
You need to be able to sign in to Mailchimp. In the Crads AI app, open Your assistant, then Connections. Under Add a connection, find Mailchimp and press Set up.
Step 1. Make an API key#
- Press Open Mailchimp API keys on the card. Mailchimp may ask you to sign in first; it then opens the right page. (To find it yourself: your profile icon, Profile, then Extras, then API keys.)
- Click Create A Key.
- Name it
Crads, so you know what it is later. - Click Generate Key, then Copy Key to Clipboard, then Done.
Mailchimp shows the whole key only this once. It looks like 32 letters and numbers, a dash, and a short code such as us21. That ending tells your mineral which of Mailchimp's servers holds your account, so copy all of it.
A key can do whatever the Mailchimp user who made it can. Mailchimp does not offer smaller, limited keys. If that matters to you, have someone with a smaller role in your Mailchimp account make the key instead.
Step 2. Paste the key#
Paste it into the card and press Connect Mailchimp. Your mineral saves it, starts the Mailchimp program, and asks Mailchimp who the account belongs to. When Mailchimp answers, the card says "Connected to" your account's name, and Mailchimp appears in Your connections with the status "working, including in scheduled jobs".
If Mailchimp turns the key down, the card says so and nothing is kept: the key is removed from your mineral straight away, so you can make a new one and try again.
| The card says | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| That does not look like a Mailchimp API key | Part of the key is missing, often the -us21 ending | Copy it again; if Mailchimp no longer shows it, make a new one |
| Mailchimp turned that key down | The key is wrong, revoked, or expired | Make a new key and paste that |
| Your mineral could not reach Mailchimp | A network hiccup | Try again in a minute |
Keys expire after a year#
Mailchimp keys made since 22 June 2026 stop working a year after they are made. The Mailchimp row in Your connections shows roughly when to expect that, counted from the day you pasted the key. When it happens, your assistant tells you Mailchimp has turned the key down: make a new key, disconnect Mailchimp, and set it up again with the new one. Keys made before 22 June 2026 do not expire.
Some things depend on your Mailchimp plan#
Mailchimp decides which features each plan includes, and your assistant can only do what your plan allows. If something is not in your plan, your assistant says Mailchimp refused it and why. Test emails are limited by Mailchimp too: on the Free plan, 24 in a day.
Disconnecting#
Press Disconnect on the Mailchimp row in Your connections. That deletes the key from your mineral. To switch it off at Mailchimp's end too, open API keys in your Mailchimp profile and click Revoke next to the key named Crads. A revoked key cannot be switched back on.