Markdown To Mailchimp

Create Mailchimp newsletters using Markdown

Note: This is still a Work In Progress

Why?

Writing emails in Mailchimp's WYSIWYG editor can be a pain. This library allows you to write Mailchimp campaign emails using Markdown and format your emails using MJML to create beautiful HTML emails. It offers both a command line (CLI) tool and a Node.js library.

Install

Use npm or yarn to install the package:

npm install markdown-to-mailchimp

or

yarn add markdown-to-mailchimp

Usage

This library exposes a command line tool and a Node library.

CLI

md2mc [options]

Command	Description
-m, --markdown	Path to markdown file to convert.
-t, --template	Path to MJML email template file.
-o, --output	(Optional) Output directory to write HTML email to.
-a, --apikey	(Optional) Mailchimp API key. Also uses MAILCHIMP_API_KEY environment variable if set.
-l, --listid	(Optional) Mailchimp list ID. Also uses MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID environment variable if set.
-k, --keeptags	(Optional) Keep Mailchimp merge tags when converting from markdown to HTML. Defaults to true.
-h, --help	(Optional) Display help.
--version	(Optional) Display version number.

Library

Import the library:

// CommonJS
const markdownToMailchimp = require('markdown-to-mailchimp');
 
// OR for ESModules
import markdownToMailchimp from 'markdown-to-mailchimp';

Call the function with an object of expected parameters:

const options = {
    // Mandatory
    markdown: './path/to/markdown/file.md',
    template: './path/to/mjml/template.mjml',
 
    // Optional
    keeptags: true,
    output: './directory/to/output/html/to/'
 
    // Optional if you want a Mailchimp campaign to be created
    // The Mailchimp list ID can also be set as frontmatter in your markdown email
    apikey: 'mailchimp-api-key',
    listid: 'mailchimp-list-id',
};
 
// Returns a promise so you can use async/await or promises
// to wait for a response
const data = await markdownToMailChimp(options);

Emails in Markdown

Your email should be created using Markdown in either the CommonMark or GitHub Flavoured markdown.

The parser allows for YAML frontmatter to be added to your markdown file, as you would when using a tool like Jekyl. This frontmatter can contain any data you want to inject into your MJML template.

If you plan to create the Mailchimp campaign in addition to rendering an HTML template, you'll need the following frontmatter set in your markdown:

• subject - The email campaign subject
• preview - The email preview text
• title - The title of the campaign
• fromName - The name of the person that is sending the email
• replyTo - The email address to reply to
• listId - (Optional) Mailchimp List (Audience) identifier. If this is not set then the list ID should be passed in the options or as the MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID environment variable.

You can use Mailchimp merge tags in your markdown but ensure that you set the keeptags option when converting. This allows you to keep a tag such as *|MC:DATE|* without it being converted to italic text.

See an example here.

MJML Templates

Once the markdown is converted to HTML, it's injected into an MJML template. This template is converted using the Handlebars templating language. This allows you to pass through any of your frontmatter variables using the {{frontmatter.yourVariable}} format. The markdown HTML content is given as the {{content}} variable.

See an example here.

Mailchimp Campaigns

This library will create a new campaign for you if no campaign already exists with the same title and subject. If it already exists then it updates with the new HTML, unless the campaign has either the sent (already delivered) or sending (for automations) status.

TODO

• Ensure conversion allows all use of Mailchimp tags
• Validate expected frontmatter for Mailchimp
• Allow different campaign types
• Sanitise output of Markdown conversion - use Sanitize?
• Tests!