How to Use Living Emails with Mailchimp

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Living Emails use images hosted by an external rendering service to show product information that’s current when an email client requests the image. Your Mailchimp email contains the image and click-through URLs; your rendering service supplies the product card, checks live inventory and pricing, and applies any fallback rules.

Living Emails aren’t a built-in Mailchimp feature. You’ll need a rendering and click-tracking service, connected to your store. Mailchimp merge tags personalize the URLs when the email is sent; your service then uses those values when it receives an image or click request. Mailchimp merge tags do not update the email’s text or links each time it’s opened.

What you’ll need

Before you start, set up:

  • A publicly reachable rendering service with image and click endpoints, such as /v2/img/ and /v2/url/ from Living Emails.
  • Connections from that service to your product catalog, inventory, pricing, and recommendation data.
  • A Mailchimp audience field that holds a unique, opaque recipient token. Your service should be able to use that token to look up the right recipient and their recommendations.
  • A strategy ID for each recommendation rule, such as abandoned cart or cross-sell, and a template ID for each product-card layout.

Avoid putting a contact’s email address directly in an image URL. URLs can be exposed to systems involved in loading or processing email images. Use a non-identifying token instead, and have your service map it to the recipient securely.

1. Create a recipient-token field in Mailchimp

Create a custom audience field to store the token that connects a Mailchimp contact to their profile in your Living Emails service.

  1. In Mailchimp, open Audience and select the audience you’ll send to.
  2. Go to Audience fields and merge tags. Depending on your account interface, this may be under Manage Audience, Settings, or More options.
  3. Choose Add A Field, select a text field, and give it a label such as Living Email Token.
  4. Set its merge tag to a short, clear name such as LETOKEN.
  5. Save the field.
  6. Populate it for each contact using your integration, a contact import, or the Mailchimp API. Make sure your Living Emails service can look up each recipient by this token.

In a Mailchimp email, the merge tag for this example is *|LETOKEN|*. Merge tags correspond to audience fields, and Mailchimp replaces them with the contact’s field value when it sends the email. Tags must match the audience’s configured merge tag exactly.

Important: Adding the field creates a place to store the token; it doesn’t automatically generate or populate one. Your integration must assign a unique token to each contact and keep the token-to-contact mapping up to date.

2. Configure your Living Emails service

In your rendering service, configure:

  • Client or account ID: Identifies the store or tenant using the service.
  • Strategy IDs: Map IDs to rules such as abandoned cart, next best offer, or upsell.
  • Template IDs: Map names such as template1 or minimal to layouts.
  • Data sources: Connect product, price, stock, and recommendation data.
  • Fallback rules: Decide what to show if a recommended item is unavailable—for example, a substitute product or a general bestseller.
  • Click behavior: Record the click and redirect the reader to the relevant product or cart page.

Use your own service’s URL format and ID values in the examples below. The endpoint paths and parameter names are illustrative; your developer must implement the service to accept the format you choose.

3. Add product cards to a Mailchimp email

For each product slot, add an image URL that requests a rendered card and a link URL that routes clicks through your tracking service.

Here’s an example using a custom audience field named LETOKEN:

<a href="https://im2.example.com/v2/url/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35506&template=template1&slot=1">
  <img
    src="https://im2.example.com/v2/img/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35506&template=template1&slot=1"
    alt="Recommended product"
    width="600"
    style="display:block; max-width:100%; height:auto; border:0;">
</a>

In this example:

  • STORE123 identifies your store or account.
  • *|URL:LETOKEN|* inserts the recipient’s token and URL-encodes it for use in the URL.
  • strategy=35506 selects the recommendation strategy configured on your service.
  • template=template1 selects a card design.
  • slot=1 requests the first product in the strategy’s results.

Mailchimp provides the *|URL:YOUR_MERGETAG|* format to URL-encode a merge-field value for use in a link.

For more products, duplicate the block and change the slot number:

<a href="https://im2.example.com/v2/url/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35506&template=template1&slot=2">
  <img
    src="https://im2.example.com/v2/img/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35506&template=template1&slot=2"
    alt="Another recommended product"
    width="600"
    style="display:block; max-width:100%; height:auto; border:0;">
</a>

Keep the image and click URLs for a card aligned: they should use the same recipient token, strategy, template, and slot.

4. Insert the code in Mailchimp

You can add the HTML to a Code content block in an email, or use a custom-coded email. Mailchimp’s instructions for pasting HTML describe using the custom-code workflow in the legacy builder; the feature may require a Standard plan or higher. Images in custom HTML must be hosted on a public server, and links should use absolute URLs.

In the email editor:

  1. Add a Code block where you want the product card to appear.
  2. Paste the HTML for the card.
  3. Repeat for each product slot, or copy and edit the block.
  4. Save the block and check the email on desktop and mobile.
  5. Include Mailchimp’s required unsubscribe link and any other required footer content in your email.

If you’re using a different editor, look for its code or HTML block. If the editor alters or removes your code, use Mailchimp’s custom-coded email workflow or ask your developer to prepare a compatible template.

5. Use different strategies in one email

You can request different recommendations in separate blocks by changing the strategy and template values. For example, use one row for abandoned-cart items and another for related products:

<!-- Abandoned-cart product -->
<a href="https://im2.example.com/v2/url/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35506&template=template1&slot=1">
  <img
    src="https://im2.example.com/v2/img/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35506&template=template1&slot=1"
    alt="An item in your cart"
    width="600"
    style="display:block; max-width:100%; height:auto; border:0;">
</a>

<!-- Related-product recommendation -->
<a href="https://im2.example.com/v2/url/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35507&template=minimal&slot=1">
  <img
    src="https://im2.example.com/v2/img/STORE123?token=*|URL:LETOKEN|*&strategy=35507&template=minimal&slot=1"
    alt="Recommended for you"
    width="600"
    style="display:block; max-width:100%; height:auto; border:0;">
</a>

Your rendering service determines what each strategy means and which products to return. Update the IDs in the examples to match your own configuration.

6. Test the merge tag and image

Before sending to your full audience:

  1. Confirm that the test contact has a populated LETOKEN field.
  2. In the campaign editor, open Preview and enter preview mode. Turn on Enable live merge tag info to preview contact-specific merge-tag values.
  3. Create an email from the saved template if needed; Mailchimp notes that merge tags may not preview in the template builder itself.
  4. Send a test to a small test segment or a real contact you control.
  5. Open the received email with images enabled. Confirm the image loads and shows the expected product card.
  6. Click the card and confirm that the click endpoint records the event and redirects to the correct destination.
  7. Test a contact with no token and a product that is out of stock. Confirm your service displays a safe fallback rather than a broken image or unsuitable item.

Mailchimp recommends previewing and testing merge tags before sending. Contact-specific merge tags may not populate in an ordinary test send, so use live merge-tag preview or a small test send to a contact with the required audience-field data.

7. Understand what “live” means

The product image is generated when an email client requests it, so your service can check current catalog data at that time. However, email clients and image-proxy services may cache images, block remote images, or load them at times other than when a person actually reads the email. As a result, a fresh render on every open cannot be guaranteed.

Use a cache policy suited to your service, and don’t rely on an email-open event as a precise record that a person viewed the message. Mailchimp’s merge tags are resolved for the recipient when the email is sent; they are not a mechanism for refreshing recipient data at each later open.

Troubleshooting

  • The merge tag appears literally: Check that the audience field’s tag is exactly LETOKEN, that the email uses *|URL:LETOKEN|*, and that the contact has a token value. Merge tags are sensitive to spelling and formatting.
  • The image is blank or broken: Check that the image URL is publicly reachable, returns an image with the correct content type, and works without a browser login.
  • The wrong product appears: Check the token-to-contact mapping, strategy ID, slot number, and the data returned by your recommendation service.
  • The image looks stale: Check your service’s caching rules and remember that the recipient’s email client or image proxy may cache the image independently.
  • The image loads but the click goes somewhere else: Make sure the link URL uses the same strategy, token, template, and slot as the image URL, and verify the redirect logic.
  • The preview doesn’t show the expected contact data: Preview with live merge-tag information or test with a contact whose audience field is populated. A standard test send may not fill contact-specific merge tags.

Mailchimp merge tags and audience-field settings can change or vary by builder. Verify the exact tag name in the audience you plan to use before launching.