OpenCRM has a pre-built integration with MailChimp that is free to use and set up  

In order to set up the integration, you will need:

  • Admin access or configuration privileges in OpenCRM
  • A MailChimp user account (either free or paid-for account)
  • Your MailChimp API key (at the time of writing, this article will walk you through retrieving that key)*

To configure your MailChimp integration:

  1. Go to Settings > Integrations > Bulk Mail / Campaign Management
  2. You should see this configuration screen (or something similar):
  3. Type your API Key in the space provided  (at the time of writing, this article will walk you through retrieving that key)*
  4. Tick the Enabled box
  5. Click Save

Setting up a Campaign

  1. Go to your Campaign module in OpenCRM and click New Campaign
  2. Fill in the Campaign Information and Description fields
  3. Then add your MailChimp information, be sure to fill in the following fields that are required by MailChimp:


  • Mail Chimp Audience (previously Contact list)
  • Campaign Mail Subject
  • Campaign Mail From Address
  • Campaign Mail From Name
  • Campaign Mail To Name (For more details about this see below)
  • Mail Chimp Template

If you choose to put a URL in the "Content URL" field, MailChimp will use this as the content of the e-mail instead of whatever template is chosen.

  1. The dropdown lists for your MailChimp Audience and Folder should be populated automatically.**
  2. Click Save
    This will save the information in OpenCRM, it will not sync with MailChimp.
  3. When you are ready to sync with MailChimp, open the Campaign in consult and click "Sync with MailChimp."
    This does not send the email. When you click the button several things will happen to ensure your Campaign is fully integrated with MailChimp:


  1. Update or create a corresponding MailChimp Campaign ID
  2. Synchronise Audience, including OpenCRM Leads, Companies, and Contacts.
    If an email address has been unsubscribed at any time, this record will not be re-added to the list.
  3. If any emails have been unsubscribed since the last sync, these records will be amended in OpenCRM to reflect this.
  4. The campaign statistics will be retrieved from MailChimp and processed in the same manner as they are during the regular 30 minute sync. 

  5. This does not send out your email.

If there are errors with any of the above, the sync will stop and you will see an error message alerting you to the problem. List of common errors.

  1. To send your Campaign Email, simply navigate over to MailChimp and send it from there. All campaign statistics will be reflected in OpenCRM (30min sync cycle) until you close the Campaign.

What is the Campaign Mail To Name?

(taken from the following Mailchimp FAQ: http://kb.mailchimp.com/campaigns/design/set-up-or-change-email-subject-from-name-and-from-email-address-on-a-campaign)

Personalize the "To:" field

When you send an email campaign to someone, you should address it to their name, if you have it in your database, instead of just their email address. Spam filters are less likely to block you if you know the recipient's name. Use the MailChimp merge tags to auto-populate the "To:" field with your subscribers first names.

If you don't have name information for all of the recipients on your list, MailChimp recommend that you don't personalize this field or that you set up a default value that will display in place of missing information. Some email programs are unable to render your campaign properly if there isn't a value in the To: field.

Please refer to the MailChimp help section for more information (see link above).

How are Unsubscribes managed?

•    If a Contact unsubscribes in MailChimp, their record in MailChimp will be marked as such. The "unsubscribe" statistic will feed back into OpenCRM and will be visible on the Campaign itself as a number. Note that OpenCRM will not show you who has unsubscribed.

•    On subsequent syncs to MailChimp, anyone who has previously unsubscribed in MailChimp will NOT get re-added to an Audience, as their record has been flagged in MailChimp.

•    Similarly, any contacts deleted in MailChimp will not be re-added on subsequent syncs. The only way to reinstate them in MailChimp is via a MailChimp signup form.

•    If a contact is marked as Do Not Email in OpenCRM, if they are included on a campaign that is synced to MailChimp, they will not get sent the email.

"Sync Unsubscribed Contacts to MailChimp"

This additional setting is OFF by default. 

When syncing contacts marked as "Do Not Email" in OpenCRM if this setting is enabled, the contacts subscription status is set to "Unsubscribed" in MailChimp. When syncing contacts NOT marked as "Do Not Email", their subscription status is set to "Subscribed" in MailChimp.

MailChimp Campaign Statistics

As well as updating your Contact, Company, and Lead lists in OpenCRM, the sync will also request statistical information from MailChimp for all OpenCRM Campaigns with a MailChimp ID and which have not been marked as “Done” or “Cancelled”.  These statistics are used to fill in the some of the fields within the “Success Benchmarks” section of the campaign consult screen.  

The following information is picked up from MailChimp and stored in OpenCRM:


  • Hard bounces
  • Soft bounces
  • Unsubscribes
  • Clicks
  • Unique clicks
  • Emails Sent

With that information, OpenCRM populates the corresponding fields in OpenCRM, and calculates the following fields:


  • Total bounces
  • Successful e-mails
  • Unsubscribe percentage
  • Click rate

Specific details about these statistics can be found here.


* MailChimp FAQ:

Please note that the content of the article cannot be guaranteed to be available by OpenCRM, neither can the content therein.  OpenCRM accepts no responsibility for the external page or its contents.

**How Are Dropdown Lists Populated?

Within the MailChimp Information block within OpenCRM, there are a number of dropdown pick lists: MailChimp Audience, MailChimp Folder, and MailChimp Template.

These fields are populated from MailChimp at a regular interval by OpenCRM.  This interval is 30 minutes.  That is to say that every 30 minutes OpenCRM will sync the lists here with the lists in MailChimp.  If a new list entry is created in MailChimp, the corresponding list in OpenCRM will be updated.

In the case of the templates, this will use any user created templates, as well as the MailChimp “basic” templates.  It does not list all of the MailChimp “gallery” templates as the list would show over 500 templates by default and become unusable.

This sync might not fall on the clock-face 30 minutes, but rather will depend on when the feature was added to a system, and run each 30 minutes from that point.

How does the sync work?

1. How does OpenCRM update records in Mailchimp? How does it match the records, and what is updated with each sync?

OpenCRM will match a list member in Mailchimp to a contact in OpenCRM based on the email address of the record in OpenCRM -  it will either update the existing list member in MailChimp it finds or add new one if no member matching on email address is found. 

OpenCRM will always push all fields from OpenCRM to MailChimp regardless of if it is a new record in MailChimp, or an update and regardless of what fields have changed in OpenCRM.

2. How does it work out when to sync a contact record?

OpenCRM will send every contact record linked to a campaign record and all values for that contact record for all mapped fields to MailChimp every time the campaign is synced. The campaign sync is triggered either by clicking the button on the campaign, or by a contact on an open campaign being modified in OpenCRM. 

3. Is there a way to view sync logs for self diagnosis?

No - this is not possible - we are happy to investigate any questions/issues on your behalf by raising a support ticket. 


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