Mailchimp is pretty great for email marketing, but it’s not without any bugs or glitches.
And it isn’t always straightforward. Most people will run into issues.
That’s where I come in!
In this post, I’ll help you fix 9 common Mailchimp issues. Use the table of contents below to navigate to your exact issue.
Table of Contents
#1 Mailchimp Abandoned Cart Not Working
The main reason why Mailchimp’s abandoned cart feature won’t work is because you are testing with a registered user.
Use unregistered email for the test and it should work.
Also double check if you set up automation for another store connection.
And if you have variable products, every line on the cart needs to have a valid product ID.
⚡Also Read: Mailchimp Undefined Upload
The AJAX requests can also be blocked by security plugins if you have any. Or it might not be triggering due to an issue with your code.
Speaking of code, Mailchimp abandoned cart won’t work on custom-coded templates.
If you are using a rather uncommon theme, it is worth reaching out to theme support too, and asking about this.
If None Of That Works…
What if you tried all of that and it still didn’t fix the issue?
Your only option is to delete the automations in Mailchimp along with the Mailchimp plugin from your WordPress and start over.
And do send mailchimp CS an email.
Or just post on the Mailchimp Subreddit – they are pretty active there.
#2 Mailchimp Links Not Working
Are your Mailchimp links not working on test emails?
That’s completely normal. Mailchimp links expire on test emails after 72 hours if you are on the free plan. But they should keep working on live campaigns.
If it’s not working on live campaigns – it’s probably because of the link tracking feature.
Mailchimp tracks clicks by appending extra text, called parameters, to the end of your links.
These look like this:
example.com/page-link?mc_cid=54a854a854a854a8&mc_eid=4a854a854a854a85
The problem is that some websites don’t like this and might treat the appended part as invalid and break it, leading to errors or redirects.
Disable click/link tracking, and your links will work!
⚡Also Read: Mailchimp Campaign Stuck On Sending
#3 Mailchimp Email Not Displaying Correctly
There are 2 reasons why your Mailchimp email is not displaying correctly:
Code Issues
The main reason for this is an issue with newsletter HTML / CSS code.
Gmail has strict guidelines about the code in newsletters. It must be properly optimized to be correctly rendered.
Mailchimp uses a drag-and-drop email builder which creates an HTML template behind the scenes. If you are copying content from other editors like Ms word onto Mailchimp, you are going to copy its formatting too.
So Gmail might remove these which will also affect the overall code.
Email Clipping
By not displaying correctly, did you mean like only half of your email is shown?
This is called email clipping and it happens because the email is larger than 102 kilobytes.
To avoid this you have to keep the message size below that.
Pro Tip
Before you run the campaign, always use the Inbox Preview feature to see how your newsletter will look in different email clients and mobile.
#4 Mailchimp Images Are Not Displayed
The reason why Mailchimp images are not displaying could be the size or format of the image. Or it could be how you are inserting the image.
Large files or uncommon formats sometimes don’t show up right.
And images won’t be displayed if they are not on a public server or if you used the absolute path of the image in your code.
So stick to common image formats like JPG or PNG and insert from the Mailchimp library.
You might also want to check your browser add-ons and network. Things like ad blockers or network firewalls (especially company networks) can interfere with images.
Try using a different browser or network to see if that helps.
Some recipients have settings to not show images automatically. So that could be it too.
If none of that works, at least add some alt text and use accessibility best practices.
#5 Mailchimp Text Not Wrapping
Mailchimp’s new email designer doesn’t let you wrap text around images yet.
You’ll have to switch to the old editor.
Or are you on the classic and text won’t wrap when using the Image + Text block?
Do this:
After inserting the image to a text block, you should see some style options come up, including the choice to wrap text around the image.
⚡Also Read: Mailchimp Remove Borders
Now, before formatting the text try the “Clear Styles” button.
That sometimes fixes the issue.
If that didn’t fix it, you may have to manually adjust the text alignment and spacing around the picture to get the look you want.
#6 Mailchimp Tags Not Working
Your Mailchimp tags are not working because of a bug – which is an easy fix.
Here’s how –
- First up, make note of the exact name of the merge tag that isn’t working. You can also set a default value to be used if the merge tag fails.
- Go back to the template and delete this tag.Then re-insert it by clicking “Insert Merge Tag.”
- After that, save changes to the template and exit back to the campaign overview.
- Saving and re-adding the merge tag sometimes fixes issues. It basically syncs everything.
- You can now open the editor again and preview the email.
Make sure to switch on the “Show Live Merge Tag Info” option so that you can see if the tags work now.
If still not working, your only option is to disconnect the template from any campaigns, delete it, recreate it from scratch, reconnect it.
#7 Mailchimp Columns Not Working
Sadly, there’s nothing much you can do if Mailchimp columns are not displaying properly.
Mailchimp has a code purification process which can mess with CSS and formatting. And they will do it for all emails with no exceptions.
Try changing the content type to Image Cards or set the width to 560 for every image (on 2 columns) for the best results.
And make sure the image is actually the same size as the width you set. Otherwise that too can break the columns.
But if this only happens on outlook, check this out –
#8 Mailchimp RSS Feed Not Working
The main reason why your RSS feed is not working is because the feed URL has unnecessary spaces, is misspelled, or is password protected.
But it could be an issue on Mailchimp’s end too.
That said, there are some plugins or themes that might output extra whitespace or characters which will break RSS validation.
I recommend posting about your issue on their subreddit too, and they’ll contact you.
If none of that worked and Mailchimp support is replying, you can use an atom feed instead of RSS feed in the meantime – which can also be read by Mailchimp.
The URL to the atom feed will look like this –
https://massivepeak.com/feed/atom
#9 Mailchimp Anchor Links Not Working
Mailchimp removed anchor links on the new email builder, it will not work on even show up.
But you can still use it in the classic editor.
Or by anchor links not working, did you mean that these links actually don’t work?
If that is the case, don’t worry – this is a small bug. Sometimes after inserting, it automatically changes back to a web link.
You need to go back, recheck and change it to an anchor link.
