Subscription-aware attribution
How Ordinary handles Recharge subscription orders so recurring renewals don't inflate your new-customer acquisition numbers.
Written by The Ordinary Team · Updated Subscription-aware attribution
Subscription-aware attribution is available on Starter and higher.
If you run a subscription program through Recharge, your orders fall into three categories that need different attribution handling:
- One-off orders — customer bought without subscribing.
- First subscription order — customer’s initial subscription purchase. Pixel-tracked like a normal order.
- Recurring subscription reorder — Recharge auto-bills the customer; no storefront click, no pixel session.
Lumping all three together distorts every attribution number. Ordinary splits them out.
How we detect subscription orders
Every order from Shopify carries a set of tags. Recharge adds specific tags when it creates or renews subscriptions:
Subscription First Order(or equivalent) on the customer’s initial subscription purchase.Subscription Recurring Order(or equivalent) on every renewal.
Ordinary reads these tags and flags each line item as either a first subscription order or a recurring renewal. Reports use that split to sort orders into the three buckets above.
What shows up where
Funnel chart (Attribution report)
The Orders bar on the funnel has a lighter-blue segment for subscription reorders (see below). Without splitting, your conversion rate would include recurring renewals that never touched the funnel — inflating the apparent store-wide conversion.
Revenue numbers
- Total revenue includes everything.
- Attributed revenue (via UTM / channel) excludes recurring reorders because they have no session / no UTMs. Showing attribution on them would be a lie — Recharge renewed them, not your ad.
First-order revenue
“First-subscription-order” revenue IS attributed normally — the customer clicked through to subscribe, the pixel saw the session, UTMs are present.
Why this matters for ROAS
A Meta campaign that drove 100 orders last month, where 40 of those orders were Recharge reorders:
- Without subscription-aware attribution: ROAS looks great. But if Meta didn’t drive those reorders (Recharge did), you’re over-crediting Meta.
- With subscription-aware attribution: the 40 reorders are excluded from Meta’s attributed revenue. ROAS is lower but closer to the truth of what Meta actually drove.
This matters most for subscription-heavy brands — coffee, supplements, beauty consumables. If <10% of your orders are subscription, the effect is small.
ROAS is calculated on net revenue — refunds are subtracted from their original-period revenue across both first-time and recurring subscription orders. A $50 first-subscription order that’s later refunded $25 contributes $25 to its attributed channel.
What if I use a different subscription tool?
Currently only Recharge tags are auto-detected. Other subscription tools (Appstle, Bold, native Shopify subscriptions) tag differently or don’t tag at all. Subscription split won’t fire for those orders.
Broader subscription-tool support is tracked as a post-launch enhancement.
On Free
On Free, reorders are counted in the same bucket as regular orders. No split is shown.
Upgrade to Starter to see the subscription segment on the funnel and the split-out revenue numbers throughout the app.