How to Connect Constant Contact to Gemini via MCP

💡 No install? Use cloud.anythingmcp.com directly. Sign in, click Connectors → Constant Contact, paste your credentials, mint an MCP API key and you're done. No Docker, no git clone, no local server.

Constant Contact + Gemini

Work with a Constant Contact account from any AI agent: contacts with their email consent, lists, tags, custom fields and segments, bulk list and tag changes, email campaigns built from your HTML with preview and test send, and the reports of campaigns, links and single contacts. V3 API with OAuth sign-in; scheduling a send and deletes install switched off.

Prerequisites

See the full setup instructions baked into the connector (visible in the in-app store when you select the connector). The required environment variables for this connector are:

CONSTANT_CONTACT_CLIENT_ID, CONSTANT_CONTACT_CLIENT_SECRET (filled in by Authorize with Provider: CONSTANT_CONTACT_REFRESH_TOKEN)

Step 1 — Get credentials

Setting up takes about 10 minutes. You register your own application in the Constant Contact developer portal and sign in with the account you want to connect.

1. Open the V3 developer portal at https://app.constantcontact.com/pages/dma/portal and sign in with the Constant Contact login of that account. New applications are private: until Constant Contact approves an application, only the user who created it can authorize it.
2. Click New Application and give it a name (it appears on the consent screen). Choose Authorization Code Flow and Implicit Flow and a refresh token type: Rotating Refresh Tokens (recommended) or Long Lived Refresh Tokens. Create it.
3. Open the application with Edit and add the redirect URI <your AnythingMCP URL>/api/mcp-oauth/callback, on AnythingMCP Cloud https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/api/mcp-oauth/callback, character for character.
4. Click Generate Client Secret. The secret is shown only once. Save the application.
5. Paste the application's API Key (it is the OAuth client ID) into CONSTANT_CONTACT_CLIENT_ID and the secret into CONSTANT_CONTACT_CLIENT_SECRET. Leave CONSTANT_CONTACT_REFRESH_TOKEN empty and install.
6. On the connector page click Authorize with Provider and sign in to Constant Contact. The connector asks for the scopes account_read contact_data campaign_data offline_access (offline_access is what returns a refresh token).
7. Run constant_contact_get_account_summary: it shows the organization and confirms the sign-in.

An access token lasts 24 hours and is renewed automatically with the refresh token. With rotating refresh tokens every renewal returns a new refresh token and the previous one stops working, so do not use the stored token anywhere else; with long-lived ones the same token keeps working. Either kind expires after 180 days without use: then authorize again. What the AI may do also depends on the privileges of the Constant Contact user who signed in (constant_contact_get_user_privileges).

What it reads: the account summary, the account's sender addresses with their confirm status, and the privileges of the signed-in user. Contacts filtered by email, status, lists, tags, segment or created, updated and opt-out dates, with their email permission, opt-in and opt-out details and, on request, lists, tags, custom fields, phones, addresses and notes; contact counts per consent state. Lists with member counts, tags with contact counts, custom fields and segments with their criteria. Background activities and their progress. Email campaigns with their activities, the subject, sender, audience and HTML of an email, an HTML preview, the schedule and the send history. Reports: results of recent campaigns (sends, opens, clicks, forwards, unsubscribes, bounces, spam reports), stats per campaign and per activity, clicks per link, the contacts behind each number, and the email history and open and click rates of one contact.

What it writes: adds or updates contacts (constant_contact_create_or_update_contact works by email, changes only the fields you send and is the safe default; constant_contact_update_contact replaces the whole contact, so the AI reads it first), creates and renames lists, tags and custom fields, adds and removes contacts on lists and tags in bulk, creates draft email campaigns from your HTML, sets their audience, renames them, sends test emails and cancels a scheduled send. Bulk changes run in the background and return an activity_id that the AI follows with constant_contact_get_activity until the state is completed.

Building an email: constant_contact_create_email_campaign makes a draft from your own HTML (custom code email, format_type 5). The HTML must contain [[trackingImage]] for opens to be tracked, and the sender and reply-to must be confirmed addresses from constant_contact_list_account_emails. Then constant_contact_update_email_campaign_activity sets contact_list_ids or segment_ids; it replaces the activity, so the AI reads it first and sends every field again. Check the result with constant_contact_get_email_preview and constant_contact_send_test_email (up to 5 addresses per test, 50 test recipients a day per account).

Switched off at install: constant_contact_schedule_email_campaign_activity (sends to every contact on the lists and cannot be taken back once sending starts), constant_contact_delete_contact and constant_contact_delete_contact_list. A workspace admin turns them on when the team needs them. With scheduling on, the AI shows you subject, sender, audience and time and schedules only after your yes.

Consent: add contacts only when they agreed to receive email from the business, and never set permission_to_send to explicit for people who did not opt in. Unsubscribed contacts cannot be subscribed again through the API without their own action. A contact can be on at most 50 lists.

Data formats: ids of contacts, lists, tags, custom fields, campaigns and campaign activities are UUIDs; segment ids are integers. A campaign has several activities: reports, previews, tests and schedules take the campaign_activity_id of the primary_email activity, not the campaign_id. Times are ISO 8601 in UTC (2026-10-30T14:05:00.000Z). Campaign current_status is Draft, Scheduled, Executing, Done, Error or Removed; permission_to_send is explicit, implicit, not_set, pending_confirmation, temp_hold or unsubscribed. Report counts are unique contacts unless the report says otherwise, and rates are percentages.

Paging: lists carry _links.next.href while more pages exist. Contacts, lists, tags, custom fields, activities and campaigns use the cursor= value of that link as cursor; reports and segments use the next= value as next. The AI keeps the other filters the same between pages.

Limits: 10,000 requests a day per application (reset at 00:00 UTC) and 4 requests a second; beyond either the API answers 429 (quota_exceeded or throttled).

Common errors: 401 means an expired or revoked token: click Authorize with Provider again, and check that the API key and secret belong to the same application. At sign-in, a redirect error means the redirect URI does not match exactly. 403 is a missing scope or user privilege (constant_contact_get_user_privileges shows which). 404 is an unknown id. 409 is a duplicate email, list, tag or campaign name. 400 explains invalid input in error_key and error_message. A 202 from constant_contact_list_contacts with a segment means the result is still being built: ask again.

The connector does not cover events, SMS campaigns, social posts or partner endpoints, and does not build emails with the drag-and-drop editor.

Step 2 — Install the adapter

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/HelpCode-ai/anythingmcp/main/docker-compose.quickstart.yml -o docker-compose.yml
printf 'JWT_SECRET=%s\nENCRYPTION_KEY=%s\n' "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" "$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose up -d

Step 3 — Add the connector in Gemini

Your server URL: in AnythingMCP, open MCP Servers → the server this connector is on, and copy its URL (https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/…). Use it wherever this guide shows YOUR_SERVER_ID.

Gemini CLI reads MCP servers from ~/.gemini/settings.json (on Windows %USERPROFILE%\.gemini\settings.json). Add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "httpUrl": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "YOUR_MCP_API_KEY" }
    }
  }
}

1. Create an MCP API key in AnythingMCP under MCP Servers → your server → API keys, and paste it in place of YOUR_MCP_API_KEY.
2. Save the file and restart gemini.
3. Run /mcp inside Gemini CLI (or gemini mcp list in your shell): anythingmcp should show as connected.
4. Start prompting: Gemini CLI can now call the Constant Contact tools.

Available tools

Example prompts

• "How did our last three email campaigns do? Compare opens, clicks, unsubscribes and bounces."
• "Add [email protected] to the Newsletter list with first name Anna. She signed up on our website."
• "Who clicked the pricing link in last week's campaign? List their email addresses."
• "Create a draft campaign from this HTML for the VIP customers list and send a test to me before anything else."
• "Tag everyone on the Webinar October list with webinar-2026 and tell me when the bulk change is done."

FAQ

Where does Gemini CLI look for MCP servers? In ~/.gemini/settings.json for your user, or in .gemini/settings.json inside a project. gemini mcp list shows each server and whether it connects.

Next steps

• Connector landing page
• Connect to Claude
• Connect to ChatGPT
• Connect to Cursor
• Connect to Meta Muse
• Connect to Microsoft Copilot