Guide · Mailchimp
Tracking a Mailchimp Campaign Through to the Sale
A 4.2% click rate is data. Knowing the top button brought in $1,240 and the bottom one nothing at all — that’s a decision for the next campaign.
Who measures what, and where each stops
Mailchimp
- Who received, who opened, who clicked
- The click rate of the whole campaign
- Unsubscribes and delivery errors
- Revenue, if a store is connected
- Nothing about what sold outside that store
Subtraq
- Which spot in the email was clicked
- Which click produced a lead, then a sale
- The amount, in revenue, per link
- The same count for the email, the story, and the post
- Nothing on opens: they can’t be measured reliably
The two don’t replace each other. Mailchimp stops at the click, because that’s the last thing it sees. Subtraq starts at the click and goes all the way to revenue, because that’s the question a client actually asks: what did this bring in.
Good to know before you go looking for a setting
Mailchimp has no click webhook
That’s why this guide doesn’t connect any webhook. It doesn’t need to: the click is counted on our end, at the redirect, and there’s nothing to push back from Mailchimp.
The side effect is convenient: the mechanics are the same no matter which email tool you use. If you switch from Mailchimp to something else next year, the links and the history stay.
Sources: the Marketing API webhooks and the Transactional product’s webhooks.
What its webhooks actually cover
The Marketing API webhooks cover subscriptions, unsubscribes, profile updates, and campaign sends. The open and click events belong to the Transactional product — formerly Mandrill — which is separate and paid.
In the campaign, 6 steps
Tagging the links in a send — without breaking anything
No API key, no pixel, no integration to authorize in your Mailchimp account. You paste URLs into an email — something you already do.
Create one Subtraq link per spot in the email
Not one link per campaign — one per clickable location. The main button, the body link, the bottom banner. That’s the only way to know which of the three did the work.
Name them so you’ll still understand them in six months
The link label is what you’ll read in the report, and what your client will read. “March newsletter — top button” is self-explanatory; “link 3” makes no sense the following week.
Paste these links into the campaign exactly as they are
Don’t add anything after them. Mailchimp rewrites links to count its own clicks, then redirects to the address you gave it — which is ours, and it needs no parameters to work.
Leave automatic link tagging on if you already use it
The audience analytics tracking feature adds campaign parameters to links. It doesn’t interfere: our redirect preserves any parameters already in the destination rather than overwriting them.
Send, and watch the clicks come in
The counting happens at the redirect, server-side. No pixel to add in the email, no script to drop on the landing page to count a click.
Connect the sale where it actually happens
Your payment system knows what was paid — your email tool doesn’t. Stripe, a store, a spreadsheet: as soon as the sale comes in, it finds the email link that brought it.
Click tracking behavior and automatic tagging recorded in the Mailchimp Help Center on September 12, 2026 — click tracking and link tagging. Interfaces change: if what you see no longer matches, the source is the authority.
The question we get most
Do you need an extra pixel? No — and that’s a relief
A script on the landing page is only useful for a lead — someone who submits their email in a form. And even there, there’s a script-free path: paste a Subtraq link in the form’s redirect field, so its submission becomes the conversion.
On opens, let’s be direct: they’re measured with an invisible image that mail clients block, prefetch, or trigger on your behalf. We don’t count them, and we don’t recommend that anyone draw conclusions from them.
The click at the server, the sale at the server
The click is recorded by our redirect, before the visitor even lands on your site: no image, no script, just a single request. The sale comes through your payment system, also server to server.
Tricky scenarios, handled honestly
A campaign gets forwarded, read on two devices, and converts three weeks later.
How do you tell apart an open, a click, and a sale?
These are three measurements of three different things. An open stays in Mailchimp and isn’t reliable. A click is a fact: someone requested a URL, and our server served it. A sale is an amount declared by your payment system. Only the last two go into the report, and the report never mixes them.
A subscriber forwards the email to a colleague, who buys.
The click is attributed to the link — so to the right spot in the right campaign — which is what matters. It’s not attributed to the right subscriber, and we don’t claim otherwise. If you need to know who, Mailchimp can generate addresses unique to each recipient using merge fields: that’s extra work, for a benefit that doesn’t apply to everyone.
The purchase happens three weeks after the click.
It can still be attributed if the attribution window of the workspace allows it: thirty days by default, adjustable. Beyond that, the sale is recorded but not attributed — and the report says so, rather than randomly picking a culprit.
Mailchimp already shows revenue. Which one to trust?
Both — but they don’t answer the same question. Mailchimp’s number comes from the connected store and is attributed to the last message the contact interacted with. Subtraq attributes to the link, across all your sources at once — the email, the story, the post. If your sales happen outside the connected store, Mailchimp doesn’t see them at all.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to connect Mailchimp to Subtraq?
No. No API key, no authorization, no integration to install. You paste links into an email — that’s it.
Does Mailchimp’s link rewriting cause problems?
No. Mailchimp counts its click then redirects to the address you gave it. Since that address is a Subtraq link that needs no parameters, there’s nothing to preserve along the way.
Can I keep my usual campaign parameters?
Yes. Our redirect never overwrites a parameter already in the destination: what you wrote intentionally stays written.
How many links do you need per campaign?
As many as there are clickable spots you want to measure. Three locations, three links. One link for the whole email will tell you “the campaign worked” — without ever telling you why.
What about unsubscribes?
Those stay in Mailchimp’s court, and that’s fine: Subtraq doesn’t collect lists and doesn’t send emails. It measures clicks and conversions.
Your payments go through Stripe?
Then the last piece is already written: paste the Subtraq URL into Stripe’s webhooks, and every payment finds the email that triggered it.
The Stripe guideYour next campaign can say what it brought in
Create the account, build one link per spot, paste them in the email. Friday’s send will answer for itself.
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