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MailChimp is an email marketing platform that offers simple tools that make it easy to design and share email campaigns, manage your subscriber lists, and track results. The MailChimp API gives users access to a directory of integrations, which connect MailChimp to hundreds of third party add-ons, plugins, and other useful services, allowing users to create their own connections between MailChimp and other services.
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Sign up[MUSIC] 0:00 Hi, I'm Nate, and I work with the MailChimp API team. 0:04 MailChimp is an email marketing platform that offers simple tools to make it 0:08 easy to design and 0:12 share email campaigns, manage your subscriber list, and track your results. 0:13 Our open API gives all users access to our directory of integrations, 0:18 which connect MailChimp to hundreds of third-party add-ons, plugins and 0:23 other useful services. 0:27 Our API also means that our users are free to create their own 0:29 connections between MailChimp and other services. 0:32 More than 200,000 customers use our API daily for 0:35 a variety of tasks, from streamlining campaign creation to 0:38 adding new subscribers to their email list, which we will be doing today. 0:41 Typically, the MailChimp API is used to automate specific routine jobs that you 0:46 can do within the application. 0:50 These jobs include keeping your external email database in sync with 0:52 a MailChimp subscriber list, like our MailChamp for Salesforce app, or 0:56 you can also automatically build campaigns that use dynamically-generated content, 1:00 or even add data about the products your subscribers have 1:05 purchased with our e-commerce methods, like Chimpified, our Shopify integration. 1:08 You can also use the API to accomplish simpler objectives without logging into 1:14 the MailChimp interface. 1:17 With the API, you can pull a report data for a sent campaign, create a segment of 1:19 your list for later use, or add a new subscriber to your MailChimp list. 1:23 That being said, 1:28 the MailChimp API doesn't offer 100% of the functionality that our website does. 1:29 For example, billing information has to be updated within the app. 1:34 You can't purchase credits, change a monthly plan, or 1:38 downgrade your account via the API. 1:42 New MailChimp accounts also need to be created manually. 1:46 You'll need access to an account to continue with this course. 1:49 So if you don't already have one, visit mailchimp.com and register. 1:53 It's free to sign up and get started. 1:56 Like most web apps, logging into MailChimp requires you to identify yourself and 1:59 your account with a user name and password. 2:03 Since the MailChimp API doesn't necessarily have an interface, 2:05 you'll identify yourself in another way. 2:09 Each MailChimp account has its own set of unique API keys that tell 2:11 MailChimp who you are and 2:15 ensure that you have permission to access the requested information. 2:17 To find your API key, log in to your MailChimp account, and 2:21 from the menu on the left, click on your name. 2:24 From the slide-out menu, choose Account. 2:26 [BLANK_AUDIO] 2:31 From the account page, click on Extras and then choose API keys from the drop-down. 2:34 The API keys page will list all of your available API keys. 2:42 To create a new key, scroll down to the bottom and click Create A Key. 2:46 [BLANK_AUDIO] 2:50 The page will refresh, and then you'll get a confirmation message that you've just 2:55 created a brand new API key. 2:58 Copy the key to your clipboard so we can use it later. 3:00 You can do this with Cmd+C, or by right-clicking and choosing Copy. 3:03 In order to keep things organized, each time you connect with a new service or 3:08 create a new project, we recommend generating a new API key and labeling it. 3:12 We'll call this one Treehouse. 3:17 Reusing an API key isn't necessarily bad, but if you have to disable it for 3:20 any reason, reconnecting all those services could be a headache. 3:24 Since your API key acts like a user name and 3:28 password for your account, you'll wanna keep it safe. 3:30 Just like you wouldn't post your user name and password on GitHub or 3:33 anywhere else online for that matter, please don't post your API key. 3:37 These keys give full access to a MailChimp account, 3:41 and you don't want a bad apple creating and sending campaigns to your list. 3:43
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