Understanding tinyEmail Message Attribution

Learn how we link emails to Shopify store conversion.

Is your email marketing generating sales? That is, I think, the most important question a Shopify store owner should ask when evaluating the ROI of their email spend.    

Let me show you how tinyEmail answers that question. 

Understanding message attribution

In an ideal world, every campaign message would be digitally traced to each buyer and transaction in your Shopify checkout. All we need is a better supercomputer to connect the digital dots that link email clicks > reader devices > and shopping cart checkouts. 

Well, we don't live in an ideal world, do we? And getting that level of granular data to measure causal connections isn't really possible for e-commerce sites and email marketing.

Instead, folks in the email marketing industry (including tinyEmail) use a simple standard to approximate a correlation. They use a timer to create an attribution window. 

Exploring the mechanics of attribution

It works like this.

Let's say your tinyEmail account sends out an email on June 1. On June 2, someone opens the message, clicks the link, visits your Shopify store, and buys something.

That's a simple use case. It's easy to connect the purchase to the email message because there was a short interval between the email event (opening and clicking) and the customer action (making a purchase). 

What if that gap was longer or less linear? 

Say the reader opens the email on June 2 and 10 days later, scans the message again, does not click the link, but instead goes directly to your store to make a purchase. 

Can you attribute the transaction to the message? The answer starts to get fuzzy. 

tinyEmail method of message attribution

We hate fuzzy, so tinyEmail developed a simple approach that connects your messages to Shopify store conversions.

Our attribution window is 10 days long. The clock starts ticking when a reader opens or clicks the most recent email. That's the starting point.

• If the reader buys something within the 10-day window, tinyEmail attributes the revenue to that email.
• Any reader action after the 10-day window is not attributed to the email.

That's it. 

tinyEmail uses a 10-day attribution window (that starts ticking with a reader open or click) to help you estimate the revenue and conversion impact of your email messages.