Mailchimp HTML email templates, checked before they land

What lands in Mailchimp

Publish creates a Mailchimp template for each language you select. You find it in Templates in your Mailchimp account, ready to pick when you create a campaign. Names follow a pattern such as {Template}_{LOCALE}, so October_update becomes October_update_EN and October_update_DE. You can rename each one in the dialog.

Pushing again updates the template with the same name instead of adding a copy. Connecting takes a Mailchimp API key. The data center in the key (us21 and so on) picks the server. Sending, lists and scheduling stay in Mailchimp.

Checked against Mailchimp before the push

Once Mailchimp is your active ESP, the email template checker reads every language with Mailchimp’s syntax in mind. A missing unsubscribe tag is a blocker, not a footnote.

Unsubscribe tag

Looks for *|UNSUB|* or *|UNSUBSCRIBE|*. Missing means a blocker. Present but hidden or tiny is flagged as high risk.

Merge tags

Mailchimp tags such as *|FNAME|* are left alone. A tag written for a different ESP is flagged, because Mailchimp would print it as text.

Dead links

Every link is requested. Mailchimp click-tracking links (list-manage.com, mailchi.mp) are skipped, so tracking does not show up as a false 404.

Leftover tokens

A {{locale.*}} or {{theme.*}} token that did not resolve is a blocker. It would reach Mailchimp as raw text.

One HTML file, one Mailchimp template per language

The layout lives in one Shared HTML file. Copy, links, images and the subject change per language through {{locale.key}} tokens, edited in a grid or imported from Excel. That workflow has its own page: HTML email localization.

Compile turns each language into plain HTML. Publish then sends each one to Mailchimp as its own template. Fixing a link in the shared file fixes it in every language on the next push.

Coded templates, not the drag-and-drop editor

Mailchimp keeps coded HTML as a template. EmailStitch writes the compiled HTML into that template as is. There is no conversion into Mailchimp blocks, so the table structure you approved is the one the campaign uses.

Merge tags such as *|FNAME|* and conditional *|IF:|* blocks pass through Compile untouched. Mailchimp fills them at send time.