How to Cancel a Scheduled Message in Mailchimp Transactional

This saved our client some explaining.

Situation

Our client can schedule a personalised e-mail to be sent to their customers using ClickUp. We utilise Zapier and Mailchimp Transactional to send these e-mails.

What if there was a customer who was at risk and shouldn't receive any communication, except for messages from their CSM rep?

That's simple. Don't schedule any automated e-mails.

What if that e-mail had been already scheduled?

Damn it!

The automation is set up to take advantage of Mailchimp Transactional's scheduling feature, so it can't be stopped in Zapier.

The only place to look is Mailchimp's scheduled queue. Which cannot be accessed in the UI...

Fortunately, there's the API documentation and Postman.

Here's how you stop a message that's supposed to be sent and you really don't want it to go out.

1) Preparation

  • Find your Mailchimp Transactional API key.
  • Get a Postman account.
  • Find the recipient's e-mail address.

2) Check whether the message is in the scheduled queue

  • Create a POST request to https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/messages/list-scheduled?key={{api_key}}&to={{email_address}}.
  • Substitute the {{api_key}} variable for your API key.
  • Substitute the {{email_address}} variable for the recipient's e-mail address.
  • Send the POST request with substituted information.
  • You are going to get a response. Copy the value you find in the _id key.

3) Cancel the scheduled message

  • Create a POST request to https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/messages/cancel-scheduled?key={{api_key}}&id={{message_id}}.
  • Substitute the {{api_key}} variable for your API key.
  • Substitute the {{message_id}} variable for the recipient's e-mail address.
  • Send the POST request with substituted information.
  • You're going to get a 200 OK response code along with the details of that message that's been successfully cancelled.

4) Check the scheduled message queue again

  • Send the same POST request as in 2).
  • You should get an empty response.

Pat yourself on the back. It's done.

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Honza Felt
Honza Felt

Managing Director

Honza Felt is a performance marketing specialist who turned into a marketing consultant after a mysterious accident. He spends his days leading a bunch of misfits at CF Agency. Drinks rum and knows things.