Shopify Email

Overview

Shopify Email is Shopify's native email marketing tool that enables merchants to send promotional campaigns, automated sequences, and transactional emails to their customer lists. On the storefront side, its scripts track campaign-attributed visits when recipients click through from emails, and measure conversion events to report email marketing ROI. It is Shopify's built-in alternative to third-party email platforms like Klaviyo or Mailchimp.

What This Script Does

Shopify Email operates across two surfaces: the emails themselves (which contain tracking pixels) and the storefront (which tracks campaign-attributed visits).

In emails:

• Tracking pixels (1x1 transparent images) loaded from Shopify's servers record when a recipient opens the email, providing open rate metrics.
• Links within the email are wrapped with tracking parameters that identify the campaign, enabling click-through rate measurement.

On the storefront:

• When a visitor arrives via a Shopify Email campaign link, scripts capture the campaign attribution parameters and associate the visitor's session with the originating email campaign.
• Subsequent events — product views, add-to-cart actions, and completed purchases — are attributed to the campaign for ROI reporting.

Key cookies set:

• Campaign attribution cookies that store the email campaign ID and click timestamp. These persist for the attribution window (typically the session or a short window) to credit conversions to the email campaign.
• Standard Shopify cookies (_shopify_s, _shopify_y, _shopify_sa_t, _shopify_sa_p) handle session and source attribution.

Data is processed entirely within Shopify's infrastructure. Campaign performance metrics (opens, clicks, conversions, revenue) are reported in the Shopify admin dashboard.

Consent & Compliance

Shopify Email operates in the marketing category. Its storefront scripts exist to measure the performance of marketing email campaigns and attribute sales to promotional activity.

Under the GDPR, the campaign attribution tracking on the storefront processes personal data (visitor IDs linked to marketing campaign interactions) for marketing measurement purposes. The email tracking pixels also process personal data (recipient's IP address, device metadata, open timestamps). Consent is required for the storefront-side campaign tracking. The email-side tracking is governed by the consent obtained when the recipient subscribed to the mailing list.

The ePrivacy Directive requires consent for cookies set on the storefront for marketing campaign attribution. These cookies are not strictly necessary for the e-commerce functionality — they exist to measure marketing effectiveness.

Under CCPA/CPRA, the campaign attribution data and email engagement metrics constitute personal information used for marketing purposes. However, since this data stays within Shopify's platform for the merchant's own marketing analysis, it is less likely to constitute a "sale" or "sharing" with third parties.

Should You Block This Without Consent?

Yes. Shopify Email's storefront scripts track marketing campaign attribution and set cookies for measuring email marketing effectiveness. These are marketing-purpose cookies that are not essential for the storefront's core e-commerce functionality and require consent before being set.