How does Instant AI attribute email revenue?

Attribution is how Instant measures whether an email contributed to a sale. When a shopper interacts with one of your emails and then makes a purchase within your attribution window, that sale is credited to that email.

Understanding how attribution works helps you read your dashboard accurately, compare Instant's results to other platforms, and decide whether the default settings are right for your store. Instant AI uses a 5 day open click attribution model by default, however this can be edited depending on your needs.

1. What customer events counts towards attribution?
2. When does the attribution window start?
3. Which email gets the credit?
4. How do attributed conversions appear in the dashboard?
5. What are the default attribution windows?
6. Can I customise the attribution window?
7. Why does my Instant revenue look different from Shopify or Google Analytics?

What customer events counts towards attribution?

Instant tracks two types of engagement:

Email

• Opens — a shopper opens your email
• Clicks — a shopper clicks a link in your email

SMS

• Delivered — an SMS was delivered to the shopper
• Clicks — a shopper clicks a link in your SMS

Instant automatically excludes machine-generated opens from attribution. This includes Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads, Gmail image proxies, and spam filter activity. Only genuine human interactions count.

SMS does not track opens. SMS attribution is based on delivery or click events only.

When does the attribution window start?

The window starts from the time of the shopper's interaction,not when the email was sent.

For example: an email sent 8 days ago would normally be outside a 5-day window. But if a shopper opens that email today and purchases today, the sale is attributed to Instant, because their interaction happened within the window.

Which email gets the credit?

If a shopper interacted with multiple Instant emails within the attribution window, the most recently engaged email gets the credit. Only one email is ever credited per purchase, there is no double-counting across flows.

How do attributed conversions appear in the dashboard?

Conversions are displayed against the date the email was sent, not the date the purchase occurred.

This is intentional. The dashboard is a view of how your email sends are performing over time, not a calendar of when purchases happened. It also matches how major ESPs including Klaviyo report attribution, which makes it easier to compare results across platforms.

What are the default attribution windows?

These match Klaviyo's default settings. If you're comparing Instant to Klaviyo and neither has been customised, you're comparing on the same basis.

Can I customise the attribution window?

Yes. You can set your own window in Settings > Email Settings > Preferences > Attribution window.

Email and SMS windows are configured separately, which is standard across the industry given they behave differently as channels.

When you change your window, all data in your dashboard and flow analytics updates immediately and retroactively, including historical results. This lets you see what your performance looks like under any model at any time.

This does not mean your previous numbers were wrong. The underlying conversion events don't change, only the lens you're using to view them.

Why does my Instant revenue look different from Shopify or Google Analytics?

These platforms use different attribution methods, and none of them talk to each other.

Shopify uses last-channel, last-click attribution based on the sales channel recorded at checkout. If a shopper clicked a link in an Instant email, Shopify may show the order sourced from Instant, but Shopify's model and Instant's model are separate calculations and will rarely match exactly.

Google Analytics / GA4 tracks UTM parameters appended to landing page URLs. When a shopper navigates from your store to Shopify's checkout domain, the UTM parameters are frequently dropped, meaning GA4 often records these orders as Direct or Unknown. This is a limitation of third-party tracking across domains, not an error in Instant.

Instant's attribution uses a first-party token appended to every email link. This is independent of UTMs and is not affected by checkout domain changes. This gives us more accurate tracking of all activity more directly in-platform. Your Instant dashboard revenue and your GA4 email revenue will rarely match, and this is expected.