CoreCommerce has a number of built-in tools for email marketing. The admin panel has a built-in newsletter, as well as a basic series of abandoned cart emails. However, to build a truly robust email marketing system, integrating with a third-party provider is often the best option. MailChimp is one example of a third party email marketing provider. CoreCommerce also integrates with Constant Contact and Emma. As a result, the platform offers the flexibility for you to select the provider that will meet the unique needs of your business.

The first step in the integration is to first create an account with MailChimp and prepare your list of contact. To sign up for a MailChimp account, visit the MailChimp website. Once you have an account, you will need to make some adjustments within the CoreCommerce admin panel to configure your new account:

  • Log in to your CoreCommerce admin panel.
  • Click in the upper right-hand corner > click on Plug-In Apps.
  • Click on Mail Chimp. 
 
 
  • Click on "Enabled" so that it is set to "YES" and enter your API key in the field below. The API key is a string of letters and numbers that you will obtain from Mail Chimp.
 
 
  • Click Save.
  • After you save, locate the line that says "Ready to start using MailChimp? Click Here" and click the link. If you have not yet loaded email lists into MailChimp, you will need to do so. The following steps will allow you to map the contact lists you have saved in MailChimp to CoreCommerce.
  • Click the Get MailChimp Lists button. If you don't have any lists in MailChimp, you will need to create those first.
  • Map your lists from CoreCommerce to MailChimp.
  • Click Save Map and you're done.
  • If you'd like, you can also apply filters to your lists by clicking the Filters tab. You can add order and/or product filters.

Now, all email marketing tasks can be conducted from your MailChimp account, rather than the CoreCommerce admin panel. When you get new subscribers to your store's mailing lists, the new contacts will be sent to MailChimp automatically, so you will not need to manually update them. These updates occur once a day, in the morning. If you want to manually run the update, there is a "Run Update" button on the Plug-in Settings screen, as seen above.