Mailchimp learns what your shoppers do through two complementary tracks: the Mailchimp Pixel, watching in the browser, and the extension’s behavioral events, reported server side. Each is at its best where the other is not, and together they cover everything.
The Mailchimp Pixel
The Pixel is Mailchimp’s own eyes on your storefront. It records page views, product views, cart activity and purchases in real time, recognizes known contacts across devices, and powers Mailchimp’s browse-abandonment automations, retargeting and site attribution. If you want Mailchimp to see what happens before a shopper identifies themselves, this is the track that sees it.
Turning it on
Switch the admin scope selector to the store view, then open Marketing → Intuit Mailchimp → Configuration and use Activate Pixel on this Store in the Pixel Tracking settings. The switch flips only after Mailchimp confirms the activation on its side, so when it is on, it is genuinely tracking. Turning it off is the same single switch. The extension pre-approves the Pixel’s script addresses in your store’s security policy; there is no setup work beyond the switch.
Once active, two settings become editable:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Auto-Track Page Views | Records your preference for support diagnostics; the Pixel tracks page views automatically whenever it is active. |
| Hash Email for Identify | Records your preference for support diagnostics; visitor identification always sends a SHA-256 hash when the browser supports it. |
Each Pixel lives on its own web domain. If two store views share one domain by paths (store.com/en and store.com/fr), one of them carries the Pixel; flip the switch on the other and the extension tells you right there, and leaves the toggle as it was. Nothing is lost either way: behavioral events keep flowing server side for every store view, so segments and Customer Journeys work on both, whatever your domain layout.
Cookie consent
The Pixel follows Magento’s Cookie Restriction Mode: with the consent banner enabled, it waits for each visitor’s consent. If you sell where cookie consent is required, keep Cookie Restriction Mode or your consent tool enabled and the Pixel takes care of the rest.
Behavioral events
Alongside the Pixel, the extension reports what identified shoppers do, straight from your server into your audience: product views, cart activity, searches, checkout starts, purchases, reviews, wishlist adds and more, seventeen kinds in all. Each event lands on the contact’s Mailchimp timeline within about a minute, with the details attached (product, price, cart total, search term), ready to trigger Customer Journeys and to power segment conditions. Because the reporting is server side, ad blockers cannot touch it, and it works on every domain layout. A shopper who types an email at checkout is added as a transactional contact, so no marketing consent is ever implied.
How the two tracks share the work
When the Pixel is active on a store view, one settings group (Pulse Behavioral Events) decides which events the Pixel carries and which are reported server side, so nothing is counted twice. When the Pixel is off, the extension reports everything server side on its own; there is nothing to configure.
Looking for guest email capture and cart recovery? That is the sync engine’s job, with or without the Pixel: see Recover abandoned carts.
Questions about tracking? Troubleshooting covers the common ones, and ebizmarts support is one email away.