Email marketing integrations

Sprout Affiliate can keep your affiliates in Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or Omnisend. Each affiliate lands there with their program, their referral link, their discount code, and a status that changes when you approve or pause them. That status is what makes an integration worth connecting: you can start a welcome series the moment someone is approved, without sending it by hand.

The integrations are in Sprout Affiliate under Settings › Integrations, in the Email marketing group. Each service has a Setup guide link beside it that opens its section on this page.

Before you start

Plan. The email marketing integrations are on the Professional plan. On a lower plan the rows show the plan name instead of a Connect button.
Who is synced. An affiliate is sent to your email service only if they have an email address and receive your store's announcements. Announcements are on for every affiliate unless they switch them off, under Notifications in their portal or with the unsubscribe link in any announcement. Someone who switches them off is taken back out, as described under each service below.
Applicants too. Applicants who have agreed to announcements are included, with the status applied, so you can follow up with someone still waiting for a decision.
More than one service. You can connect all three at once. Each one is kept up to date separately.
Your key stays private. Every service connects with an API key you create in that service. Sprout Affiliate stores it encrypted and never shows it again. You can cancel it in your email service at any time, which stops the connection.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp calls a contact list an audience. You choose one audience, and your affiliates are added to it.

Step 1: Choose or create an audience

You can use an audience you already have. If you want affiliates kept apart from your customers, create one for them first:

Sign in to Mailchimp.
Go to Audience and click Create Audience.
Name it, for example Affiliates, fill in the sender details Mailchimp asks for, and click Save.

Some Mailchimp plans allow only one audience. On those plans, use the one you have. The tags described below keep affiliates easy to find in it.

Step 2: Create an API key

In Mailchimp, click your name, then Account & billing.
Click Extras, then API keys.
In the Your API keys section, click Create a key. Name it Sprout Affiliate so you recognise it later.
Copy the key. A Mailchimp key ends with a hyphen and your account's data centre, like -us19.

Step 3: Connect it in Sprout Affiliate

Go to Settings › Integrations and click Connect on the Mailchimp row.
Paste the key into Mailchimp API key and click Connect.
An Audience list appears with the audiences in your Mailchimp account, and how many contacts each has. Pick the one affiliates should go into.
Click Use this audience.

Settings › Integrations, after the key is accepted

Connect Mailchimp

Audience

Affiliates (42)

Use this audience

The Mailchimp row then shows Connected, and every affiliate who can be synced is queued. See When it syncs for how long that takes.

What Sprout Affiliate adds to Mailchimp

When you connect, Sprout Affiliate adds five fields to the audience, so there is nothing to set up yourself. A field you already have with the same tag is left as it is. Each affiliate's contact is then filled in like this:

Merge tag	Field	What it holds
`FNAME`	First Name	The first word of the affiliate's name
`LNAME`	Last Name	The rest of their name
`AFFSTATUS`	Affiliate status	applied, approved, or paused
`AFFPROG`	Affiliate program	The name of their program
`AFFREF`	Affiliate ref	Their link name
`AFFCODE`	Affiliate discount code	Their discount code, if they have one
`AFFLINK`	Affiliate referral link	Their full referral link

Tag	When
Affiliate: applied	They have applied and are waiting for your decision
Affiliate: approved	You approved them, or resumed them after a pause
Affiliate: paused	You paused them

Klaviyo

Klaviyo calls a contact list a list. Sprout Affiliate's box calls it an audience, but it is the same thing: you choose one list, and affiliates are added to it.

Step 1: Choose or create a list

Sign in to Klaviyo.
Click Audience, then Lists & Segments, then Create New, then Create List.
Name it, for example Affiliates, and create it.

Step 2: Create a private API key

Click your account name at the bottom left, then Settings.
Open Account, then API keys, and click Create Private API Key.
Name it Sprout Affiliate and choose Full Access Key. If you would rather give only what is needed, choose a custom key with full access to Lists and Profiles.
Create the key and copy it. A private key starts with pk_. The public key (also called the site ID) will not work, and Sprout Affiliate says so if you paste it.

Step 3: Connect it in Sprout Affiliate

Go to Settings › Integrations and click Connect on the Klaviyo row.
Paste the key into Klaviyo private API key and click Connect.
Pick the list from Audience, and click Use this audience.

What Sprout Affiliate adds to Klaviyo

Each affiliate's profile gets their first and last name, and these custom properties. Klaviyo needs no setup for them.

Property	What it holds
Sprout Affiliate	yes
Affiliate status	applied, approved, or paused
Affiliate program	The name of their program
Affiliate ref	Their link name
Affiliate discount code	Their discount code, if they have one
Affiliate referral link	Their full referral link

Klaviyo has no tags, so the status is the Affiliate status property. To send a welcome series, build a flow triggered by your list, or by a segment where Affiliate status equals approved. In an email, a property goes in as {{ person|lookup:'Affiliate referral link' }}.

Sprout Affiliate adds the profile to your list. It does not change the profile's email marketing consent in Klaviyo, and Klaviyo only sends marketing email to profiles that are subscribed.
An affiliate who switches off your announcements is taken off the list. Their profile and its properties stay in Klaviyo.

Omnisend

Omnisend has no lists to choose from. Affiliates are added to your contacts and marked with tags, which Omnisend's segments and automations read.

Step 1: Create an API key

Sign in to Omnisend, or create an account.
Open Store settings, then Integrations & API, then API keys, and create a key. Omnisend's own guide to generating an API key has pictures of each step.
Copy the key.

Step 2: Connect it in Sprout Affiliate

Go to Settings › Integrations and click Connect on the Omnisend row.
Paste the key into Omnisend API key and click Connect.

That is all. There is no list to pick, so the row shows Connected straight away and your affiliates are queued.

What Sprout Affiliate adds to Omnisend

Each contact gets the affiliate's first and last name, the tag Sprout Affiliate, one status tag (Affiliate: applied, Affiliate: approved, or Affiliate: paused, the same as Mailchimp), and these custom properties:

Property	What it holds
`affiliateStatus`	applied, approved, or paused
`affiliateProgram`	The name of their program
`affiliateRef`	Their link name
`affiliateCode`	Their discount code, if they have one
`affiliateLink`	Their full referral link

Tags you added to a contact yourself are kept. Only Sprout Affiliate's own tags are changed.

An affiliate who is new to Omnisend is added as subscribed to email. An existing contact keeps the status they have.
An affiliate who switches off your announcements has Sprout Affiliate's tags taken off. The contact stays in Omnisend.

When it syncs

Changes are not sent the instant they happen. They wait in a queue that Sprout Affiliate sends to each service once an hour, up to 40 affiliates per service each time. Mailchimp in particular limits how many connections one account can have open at once, including your own browser, so sending in small batches keeps your account working normally.

After you connect, a store with up to 40 affiliates is fully synced within the hour. A larger store takes one hour for every 40 affiliates, so 400 affiliates take about ten hours.
After that, an affiliate is updated within the hour when you approve, pause, or resume them, and when they switch your announcements on or off.
If the service is down or busy, the change is tried again at the next run, up to five times.

If every change in a run is refused, the row shows Needs attention. The usual cause is a key that was deleted or cancelled in your email service. Disconnect, create a new key, and connect again.

Re-sync and Disconnect

A connected row has two buttons.

Re-sync queues every affiliate again for that one service. Use it after you edit a lot of affiliates at once, or if contacts look out of date. Anyone who has switched off your announcements is removed in the same pass.
Disconnect deletes the stored key and anything still waiting in the queue for that service. It does not remove anyone from your email service: contacts already there stay there, with their fields and tags. Other connected services are not affected.