Stripe Revenue Attribution: How to Measure Email Revenue From Stripe

Short answer: Stripe revenue attribution credits each Stripe payment to the email that most plausibly drove it. In Audienceful, a payment goes to the most recent email the customer clicked within 5 days, or the most recent one they opened if there was no click. Refunds come back out, and every payment counts toward your total, credited or not.

Email is one of the few channels where a subscription business can tie a message to money. A trial reminder goes out, the customer clicks, and their first invoice is paid an hour later. With Stripe connected, that link is recorded for you, and each campaign and automation shows the revenue it earned.

Subscription revenue has quirks that one-off purchases don't, though. Renewals happen whether or not anyone read your email, and annual plans pay twelve months at once. Email revenue attribution for SaaS has to account for both. This guide covers what counts, how to read it, and what to watch for each flow. For the concepts themselves (models, windows, clicks vs opens), read how revenue attribution works in email marketing first.

How Audienceful attributes Stripe revenue

When a Stripe payment succeeds, Audienceful looks back at that customer's recent email activity and applies a few rules. The full list is in the revenue attribution help doc; these are the ones that matter most for subscriptions:

• Clicks beat opens. A click inside the window wins the credit, even if the customer opened a different email more recently.
• Most recent wins. Two clicks inside the window? The later one gets the payment. This is last-touch attribution.
• The window is 5 days by default, measured back from the moment of payment.
• Bots don't count. Automated opens and clicks, such as security scanners, are filtered out first.
• Each payment is counted once. Stripe can send several events for one invoice. They resolve to a single payment.

There's nothing to install and no links to tag. The credit goes to the specific campaign, or to the automation the email belongs to.

What counts as a payment

Revenue comes from Stripe's successful payments: subscription invoices, Stripe Checkout and Payment Links, including guest buyers who never got a Stripe customer record. The amount is what the customer actually paid.

A few things to know:

• Free invoices aren't revenue. A $0 invoice at the start of a trial doesn't count. The first real charge does.
• Historical payments count toward totals, not toward email. Payments brought in by the historical import happened before your Audienceful emails, so they aren't attributed. That keeps email-attributed numbers honest.
• Unattributed payments still count. Every successful payment is recorded against your total revenue. That's what makes "share of revenue from email" a real fraction.
• The customer has to be a contact. Payments can only be credited to people Audienceful matches by email address.

First payments vs recurring payments

This is the part that's specific to subscriptions. Attribution looks at each payment on its own. It doesn't know whether a payment is a first charge or the twelfth renewal.

That has two effects:

• First payments are the clearest signal. A trial converting after a reminder email, or a cancelled customer resubscribing after a win-back, is exactly what attribution is built to measure.
• Renewals can pick up credit by coincidence. If a monthly customer clicks your newsletter three days before their card renews, that renewal is credited to the newsletter. They would have renewed anyway.

The longer your customers stay and the more often you email them, the more renewal revenue lands near an email by chance. So don't read a newsletter's attributed revenue as "money this email created". Read it as "money from people who were engaged with this email when they paid", and compare like with like.

Annual plans add one more wrinkle. A customer who switches from monthly to annual pays a year up front, so one click can credit twelve months of revenue to a single campaign. That's correct, since the email did prompt the payment, but it makes annual offers look huge next to monthly ones. More on that in moving monthly subscribers to annual.

Refunds are netted out

When Stripe reports a refund, Audienceful subtracts it from the original payment. Partial refunds subtract partially. The reduction lands on the original payment's date, not the refund date, so last month's report doesn't quietly overstate itself.

If a campaign's revenue drops a few weeks after you sent it, refunds are the usual reason.

Why it won't match your Stripe MRR

It isn't meant to. Attributed revenue and MRR measure different things.

Stripe defines MRR as each active or past-due subscription's value normalized to a monthly amount. Attribution counts cash when it arrives. Use MRR to track the business and attributed revenue to compare emails. Never add one to the other, and don't add email-attributed revenue to what your ad platforms claim either. They can all claim the same payment.

Per-campaign and per-automation reports

You'll find revenue in three places:

• The dashboard shows revenue from email for the period, with the change from the previous one.
• Each campaign's send report shows net attributed revenue for that send.
• Each automation's Analytics tab shows revenue earned across every email in the flow, next to its conversion rate. See automation analytics.

Automations also have goals, which are separate from revenue. A goal counts a contact as converted when they reach an outcome, such as Stripe Subscription Status is active, within the goal's own window (30 days by default from entering the flow). For subscription flows, the goal conversion rate is often the better number, because it counts conversions even when no email touch landed inside the 5-day revenue window.

Which numbers to watch for trial, dunning and win-back flows

Two cautions. Dunning revenue over-credits: Stripe retries failed payments automatically, and some retries succeed on their own. If the customer opened your dunning email in the days before, the recovered payment is credited to it anyway. Watch clicks on the update-card link to see how many recoveries the email really caused.

Win-back revenue under-credits: people often come back weeks after your email, outside the 5-day window. Lengthen the goal window on the win-back flow and judge it on conversions.

Mistakes to avoid

• Judging a flow too early. A young automation has people still inside it. Give it at least a full goal window before deciding.
• Comparing totals instead of rates. A campaign to 5,000 customers should out-earn one to 500. Divide revenue by recipients to compare them fairly.
• Treating newsletter revenue as new revenue. Much of it is renewals that would have happened anyway.
• Skipping the historical import. Without it, total spend and spend-based audiences only include payments since you connected.
• Expecting it to match Stripe. It won't, and that's fine. Track the trend.

How to do it in Audienceful

1. Connect Stripe from Integrations with Stripe Connect. Revenue tracking starts on its own. Step-by-step.
2. Run the historical import with payments included, so totals and spend audiences are complete.
3. Add goals to each subscription automation. Pause the flow to edit them, and set the window to fit the flow.
4. Check the reports on the dashboard, each send report and each automation's Analytics tab.
5. Compare flow against flow and campaign against campaign, month over month.

The Stripe events behind these flows are covered in our Stripe email automation guide, and the reporting overview is on the Stripe integration page.

Audienceful is free up to 1,000 contacts, then paid plans start at $29/month billed yearly ($37.50 monthly) for 3,000 contacts. Start free and connect Stripe in a few clicks.

FAQs

How do I track revenue from email campaigns with Stripe?

Use an email platform that reads Stripe payments and credits them to emails. In Audienceful, connecting Stripe is enough: each payment is credited to the most recent email the customer clicked, or opened, within 5 days, and shows on that campaign's report.

Do renewal payments count as email revenue?

They count toward total revenue, and they're credited to an email if the customer clicked or opened one within 5 days before paying. That means renewals can be credited by coincidence, so treat newsletter revenue as a comparison number.

Why is my email revenue different from Stripe?

Stripe's dashboard shows all revenue, and MRR spreads annual plans across months. Attributed revenue only includes payments credited to an email, counts annual plans when paid, and nets refunds against the original payment.

Are refunds subtracted from attributed revenue?

Yes. Full and partial refunds are subtracted from the original payment, on that payment's date, so earlier reports stay accurate.

Does imported Stripe history count as email revenue?

No. Imported payments count toward your total revenue and customers' total spend, but they aren't credited to email, since they happened before your Audienceful emails.

Sources

• Stripe: Subscription analytics and MRR