How to Add an Instagram Feed to a Mailchimp Email

Adding your Instagram feed to your Mailchimp emails bridges the gap between your two most powerful marketing channels. It shows off your best visual content, boosts your social proof, and gives your email subscribers a direct path to follow you on Instagram. This article breaks down exactly how to do it, from the simplest manual methods to a more dynamic, automated approach.

Why Add Your Instagram Feed to Mailchimp in the First Place?

Before jumping into the "how," let's quickly cover the "why." Integrating your Instagram content isn't just about making your emails look pretty, it's a strategic move that delivers real benefits for your brand.

• Boost Your Instagram Following: The most obvious benefit is an increase in followers. Your email subscribers are already invested in your brand, they're the perfect audience to convert into loyal social media followers. Giving them a visual preview of what you're posting is a much stronger pull than a simple social icon link.
• Increase Engagement on Both Platforms: By driving email traffic to specific Instagram posts, you can increase likes, comments, and shares. This improved engagement signals to the Instagram algorithm that your content is valuable, which can lead to greater organic reach. Emails featuring dynamic content also tend to see higher click-through rates.
• Provide Powerful Social Proof: Your Instagram feed is a living portfolio of your brand. It showcases your products in action, highlights happy customers through user-generated content (UGC), and demonstrates an active, engaged community. Placing this directly into an email lends instant credibility and trustworthiness to your brand.
• Keep Your Email Content Fresh and Dynamic: Let's be honest, creating new email content week after week can be exhausting. Your Instagram feed provides a steady stream of fresh, visually appealing content. It can fill a section in your newsletter with minimal effort, keeping your campaigns dynamic without requiring a complete content overhaul for every send.

Understanding Mailchimp’s Native Functionality (and Its Limits)

It's important to know that Mailchimp does not have a native, real-time, "live" Instagram feed block that automatically updates in your emails. You can't just drag and drop a widget that pulls your latest posts every time someone opens the email. Mobile email clients' security and technical restrictions make live content like that very difficult to implement reliably.

However, you can create the appearance of a dynamic feed using Mailchimp’s existing blocks and some clever strategies. We'll walk through three methods, starting with the simplest and moving to the most automated.

Method 1: The Manual Screenshot Grid (Simple &, Fast)

This is the quickest and simplest way to get your grid into an email. It's perfect for when you need to get a campaign out the door fast and don't need individual posts to be clickable.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Take a Screenshot of Your Profile: Open your Instagram profile on a desktop web browser (it looks cleaner than on mobile). Arrange the browser window so you get a nice, clean view of your top 6 or 9 posts. Take a screenshot.
2. Crop the Image: Use any basic image editor (like Preview on Mac or Photos on Windows) to crop the screenshot so it only shows the grid of photos. Remove the bio, follower counts, and any surrounding browser elements.
3. Open Your Mailchimp Campaign: In the Mailchimp email editor, drag an Image block into your template where you want the feed to appear.
4. Upload Your Screenshot: Click the "Upload an Image" button and select your cropped screenshot.
5. Link The Image to Your Profile: This is a step you shouldn't skip. Once the image is in place, click it and select the "Link" option in the editor toolbar. Enter the full URL to your Instagram profile (e.g., `https://www.instagram.com/yourusername`).

Pros: Insanely fast, requires no additional tools, and is a simple visual call-to-action.

Cons: The image is static, it won't be updated with your latest posts unless you repeat the process. The entire grid links to only one location (your profile), so subscribers can't click through to a specific post that catches their eye.

Method 2: Clickable Individual Posts (More Engaging)

This method takes slightly more effort but delivers a much better user experience. Instead of one large, unclickable image, you create a grid where each image links directly to its corresponding Instagram post.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Gather Your Assets: Decide which 4 to 6 recent posts you want to feature. For each one, you'll need two things:
   • A screenshot of the individual image/video thumbnail.
   • The direct URL to that post (click the post on Instagram and copy the URL from your browser’s address bar).
2. Use the "Image Group" Block: In the Mailchimp editor, drag the Image Group block into your campaign. This block lets you arrange multiple images side-by-side. You can select a layout with two, three, or four columns. For a 2x2 grid, you would use two "Image Group" blocks stacked on top of each other.
3. Upload and Link Each Image: In the Image Group block, click on each placeholder to upload one of your post screenshots. After uploading each image, be sure to use the "Link" field to paste the specific URL for that individual post.
4. Repeat for All Posts: Continue uploading and linking your images until your grid is complete.

Pros: Far more engaging for subscribers as they can click on posts that interest them. Drives traffic to specific content. Looks sharp and professional.

Cons: It's still a manual process. You have to gather the screenshot and link for every post and update it for each new email campaign you build.

Method 3: Third-Party Tools &, RSS (Automatic &, Dynamic)

If you want a truly dynamic solution that automatically pulls your latest Instagram posts into your Mailchimp emails, you'll need to use a third-party tool. These services connect to your Instagram account and generate an RSS feed from your posts. Mailchimp can then read this RSS feed to populate your emails.

Popular tools that offer this functionality include Elfsight, Flockler, and Taggbox. The setup process is generally similar for all of them.

General Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Choose and Sign Up for a Tool: Select a third-party feed aggregator and create an account. Many have free plans for a limited number of views or a single feed.
2. Connect Your Instagram Account: Authenticate and connect your Instagram Business account to the service. Grant it the necessary permissions to read your posts.
3. Customize Your Widget: Design your feed! Choose your layout (e.g., grid), select the number of posts to display, and customize the styling. Most importantly, look for an output option designed for email or one that provides an RSS feed URL.
4. Generate the RSS Feed URL: Once your feed is ready, the tool will provide a unique URL. This is the link to the RSS feed of your Instagram posts. Copy it.
5. Add the RSS Feed Block in Mailchimp: Go back to your Mailchimp email editor. This time, drag the RSS Feed block into your layout.
6. Configure the RSS Block: In the block's settings, paste the RSS feed URL you copied from your third-party tool. You can then configure how Mailchimp displays the feed - you can choose to show just images, images with captions, or other combinations. Mailchimp pulls the content from the RSS source whenever you send a new campaign, so it's always up-to-date with your latest content.

Pros: Fully automated and dynamic. Set it up once, and your most recent posts will be pulled into campaigns automatically. Highly professional look.

Cons: Relies on an external (and often paid) service. The setup is more complex, and email clients sometimes have unpredictable ways of rendering content from RSS feeds, so thorough testing is essential.

Best Practices for Success

No matter which method you choose, follow these tips to get the best results:

• Add a Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Don't just drop the grid into your email. Add a header above it like "Catch Up on Instagram!" or "More on The 'Gram." Also include a separate button below it that says "Follow Us on Instagram" and links to your main profile page.
• Optimize for Mobile: Most people will open your email on their phones. Before sending your campaign, use Mailchimp's "Preview and Test" feature to see how your grid looks on a mobile device. Ensure the images are clear and appropriately sized. For more general tips, learn how to optimize your Instagram profile.
• Keep It Simple: Your entire Instagram presence doesn't need to be in your email. A grid of 4-6 recent, high-quality posts is more than enough to entice users to click through without overwhelming them.
• Focus on Consistency: Make your shared Instagram content a recurring part of your newsletter. When subscribers know to expect it, it becomes a valuable, integrated piece of your email strategy rather than a one-off gimmick.

Final Thoughts

Connecting your Instagram and Mailchimp is a powerful strategy for cross-promotion that strengthens your community on both platforms. Whether you opt for a quick manual method or set up a fully automated RSS feed, featuring your visual content is a surefire way to make your emails more engaging and grow your social following.

Creating high-quality social content is the first and most critical step. After all, you need a compelling feed to show off in your emails. When legacy scheduling tools were making that job harder instead of easier - struggling with video and constantly disconnecting - we decided to build something better. We designed Postbase with a visual planner and rock-solid publishing for video formats like Reels and Shorts, so you can build out a beautiful feed worth sharing. That way, when you add your feed to your next Mailchimp campaign, you can be proud of the fresh, consistent content your audience sees.