How to use Draftship with Mailchimp
Paste a Draftship export into Mailchimp's Code Your Own template, swap the Liquid variables to Mailchimp's pipe-style merge tags, and let the Image Manager auto-mirror your CDN images on the first send.
Mailchimp is the default for SMB email and the platform most people first paste raw HTML into. The path is straightforward: design in Draftship, paste into Code Your Own in the classic builder, swap variables, and ship. The two surprises waiting for you are the merge tag style (Mailchimp uses pipe-wrapped tokens like *|FNAME|*) and the new builder, which won't accept raw HTML at all.
Where Mailchimp accepts pasted HTML
Open Mailchimp, go to Campaigns → Create → Email → Regular. On the template chooser, scroll to the bottom and pick Code Your Own → Paste in Code. The full HTML editor appears. Paste your Draftship export.
The new builder (relaunched 2024) does not have a Code Your Own option. If you don't see it, you're in the new builder; switch to classic in your account preferences.
Merge tag mapping
Mailchimp's merge tags use *|TAG|* syntax. Personalization tokens come from audience field tags, which are configurable per audience.
| Draftship | Mailchimp |
|---|---|
{{ first_name }} | *|FNAME|* |
{{ last_name }} | *|LNAME|* |
{{ email }} | *|EMAIL|* |
{{ company }} | *|COMPANY|* (or your custom tag) |
| Unsubscribe link | *|UNSUB|* |
| Physical address | *|LIST:ADDRESS|* |
| Update profile | *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* |
| View online | *|ARCHIVE|* |
For defaults, Mailchimp uses an inline fallback syntax: *|FNAME|* *|FNAME:there|* does not work the way Liquid does. The correct form is *|IF:FNAME|* Hi *|FNAME|* *|ELSE:|* Hi there *|END:IF|*.
Image hosting and the auto-mirror behavior
Mailchimp's Content Studio hosts images on their CDN. If you paste HTML with external image URLs, Mailchimp does not auto-host them on save. The first time you send the campaign, their proxy fetches and caches the images. From then on, your subscribers see the cached version.
The reliable workflow:
1. Use external image URLs in Draftship while iterating. 2. Before scheduling, open the email in Mailchimp's preview. 3. Verify every image renders. Broken ones won't auto-fix themselves. 4. For permanent reuse, upload to Content Studio and replace the external URL.
What Mailchimp sanitizes from your HTML
Mailchimp's pasted HTML survives mostly intact, with a few things to know:
<style>blocks are kept but Mailchimp adds a wrapper class to every<body>tag for their preview rendering. It doesn't affect inbox rendering.- Outlook VML conditional comments are preserved.
- Some attribute selectors get a sanitizer warning ("Recommended changes") but still ship.
- The "Send time optimization" feature requires Mailchimp to control the schedule. If you want exact send time, disable it.
Test send checklist
- Send a real test to Gmail and Outlook before scheduling.
- Run Email size checker to confirm you're under 102 KB after Mailchimp's wrappers.
- Spot-check the unsubscribe link from a recipient address.
- If using A/B variants, test each variant separately. Mailchimp's preview only shows variant A by default.
When to use Mailchimp's drag-drop builder
If a non-technical teammate will edit weekly, the drag-drop builder is the right tool, and Draftship is overkill. If you're shipping a launch email or a marketing piece you want to render in every Outlook version, the Code Your Own path holds up.
For a primer on placement of unsubscribe and physical address, see the merge tag fallbacks guide.