Mailchimp's e-commerce integration with Ticketsolve credits each of your campaigns with the revenue it generates, so you can see which emails are driving bookings. This article explains how that attribution works: how Mailchimp decides which campaign earns credit for a sale, what has to happen for a booking to be counted, and where to look if the revenue in your reports doesn't match what you expect.
How does Mailchimp attribute revenue?
Once your Mailchimp audience is connected to Ticketsolve, attribution happens automatically inside Mailchimp. Mailchimp records when each subscriber opens or clicks your campaigns, and Ticketsolve syncs their orders across through their customer record. When an order comes in, Mailchimp credits it to the last campaign that subscriber interacted with, as long as that interaction falls inside the attribution window. This is known as last-touch attribution.
The attribution windows
By default, Mailchimp attributes an order to an email if the purchase happens within 5 days of an open, or within 30 days of a click. If a subscriber interacts with more than one campaign, the most recent interaction inside its window takes the credit.
You can adjust these in Mailchimp under Analytics > Conversion insights > Attribution Settings, in the Attribution windows section, where email opens and email clicks can each be turned on or off and their windows changed.
It's worth setting these to suit how your audience actually books: shorten a window if you want to credit only sales that follow soon after an interaction, or lengthen it if your buyers tend to take their time before booking. There's a full explanation on Mailchimp's About Mailchimp Attribution page.
Important
The email address has to be opted in. Revenue only attributes for orders tied to an opted-in email address, because that's what syncs to Mailchimp. A booking made with an email that isn't opted in anywhere on your account won't sync, and won't be attributed.
How the opt-in sync works
The sync works at the level of the email address, not the individual customer record. A single email can sit on more than one record in Ticketsolve, for example a guest checkout alongside a full account, and opt-in status is shared across all records with that email.
So, if a customer is opted in on one record, then books as a guest without selecting opt-in, the order still syncs and attributes, because the email is opted in. What matters is whether the email address is opted in, not which record the booking was made on.
Attribution doesn't depend on how or where the booking was made. Provided the subscriber opened or clicked the campaign and then booked within the attribution window, the sale can be credited to that campaign whether they booked online, over the phone, or in person at the box office. Any order type that syncs to Mailchimp can be attributed, not online sales alone.
Optional: tracking parameters for Your Reports and GA4
Mailchimp adds parameters to the links in your campaigns, including mc_cid (the campaign ID) and mc_eid (the recipient ID). They don't affect Mailchimp's revenue figures, which come from the attribution above.
They have a separate use on the Ticketsolve side. Captured in Your Reports through the Formatted Trackers field, and in GA4, these parameters (along with UTM and ad-platform codes) give you a Ticketsolve-side view of which campaigns drove bookings, alongside Mailchimp's own reporting.
When the booking journey starts on your own website before continuing into Ticketsolve, the parameters need carrying across into the booking flow. The cross-domain GTM tag does this, and the full setup is in the UTM Cross Domain GTM Tag setup guide.
This part is optional. For most venues, Mailchimp's own attribution is all you need to see campaign revenue in Mailchimp. The Your Reports and GA4 tracking is an optional extra for teams who also want campaign visibility inside Ticketsolve.
How to check revenue tracking is working
The cleanest way to confirm the integration end to end is to run a test booking as a subscriber.
- Send a test campaign to yourself, using an email address that's an opted-in contact in your synced Mailchimp audience.
- Open the email and click through to your booking flow.
- Complete a test or comp booking as that subscriber, making sure you're opted in or logged in so the order syncs.
- Give the order a little time to sync to Mailchimp, then open the campaign report for that email and check for revenue against it.
Notes
Attribution isn't always instant, and it follows the windows above. If your test click and purchase are minutes apart you'll be well inside them, but bear in mind that in live use a sale only attributes if the subscriber opened or clicked within the window before buying.
Frequently asked questions
Only orders tied to an opted-in email address sync to Mailchimp. Because opt-in status is shared across every record with the same email, a guest booking can still attribute if that email is already opted in elsewhere on your account. What won't attribute is a booking made with an email that has never opted in, or by someone who isn't in your audience. This is the most common reason for a gap between real sales and attributed revenue.
There are a few potential causes. The purchase may have fallen outside the attribution window, for example a click more than 30 days before the booking. The subscriber may not have opened or clicked the campaign at all, so there's no interaction to credit. Or a later campaign they interacted with took the credit instead, because attribution is last-touch.
Both count by default: an open within 5 days or a click within 30 days. You can turn either off, or change the windows, in Analytics > Conversion insights > Attribution Settings in Mailchimp.
A note on opens
Open tracking has become less reliable since Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, which can register opens that didn't really happen. If your open-based numbers look inflated, that's usually why, and it's why click-based attribution tends to be the more dependable signal.
No. Mailchimp attributes revenue from the opens and clicks it recorded against the subscriber, matched to their synced order, so the path the link takes makes no difference to Mailchimp's figures. Links that go through your own website first are fine.
They measure campaign performance in different ways, so some difference is normal. Mailchimp uses last-touch attribution based on the subscriber's opens and clicks. Ticketsolve's Your Reports uses the tracking parameters captured in the Formatted Trackers field, which depend on those parameters reaching the booking flow. Both are valid views of the same campaigns, seen through different methods.
Still not seeing what you expect?
If you've worked through the above and the numbers still don't add up, get in touch with our Support team. Let us know the campaign, a specific order you'd expect to see attributed, and roughly when the subscriber opened or clicked, and we can investigate from there.
Comments
Please sign in to leave a comment.