How to track sales conversion events with Google Tag Manager and Dub

Conversion tracking require a Business plan subscription or higher.

When it comes to conversion tracking, a sale event happens when a user purchases your product or service. Examples include:

Subscribing to a paid plan
Usage expansion (upgrading from one plan to another)

In this guide, we will be focusing on tracking sales events for a SaaS application that uses Google Tag Manager to track conversions.

Prerequisites

Before you get started, make sure you follow the Dub Conversions quickstart guide to get Dub Conversions set up for your links:

Configure Google Tag Manager server-side tracking

If you’ve already set up the Dub GTM Server Client and Tag for lead tracking, you can skip ahead to step 5.

To track sales conversion events with Google Tag Manager, you’ll need to set up a server container and configure a custom client to handle Dub conversion events.

1. Set up GTM Server Container

If you’ve already set up the Dub GTM Server Client and Tag for lead tracking, you can skip this step.

In Google Tag Manager, you’ll need to use an existing server container or create a new one. Server containers are the foundation for server-side tracking and allow you to process events before they reach their final destinations.

If you already have a server container set up, you can use that
If not, create a new server container in your GTM workspace

2. Import Dub GTM Server Client Template

If you’ve already set up the Dub GTM Server Client and Tag for lead tracking, you can skip this step.

Inside your GTM server container, navigate to the Templates tab. Under Client Templates, click the New button.

This will open up the Template Editor. In the top right corner, click on the ⋮ button and select Import.

Download the gtm-server-client-template/template.tpl file and upload it to the Template Editor. You’ll see a preview of the template:

Click the Save button in the top right to save the template.

3. Create Dub Server Client

If you’ve already set up the Dub GTM Server Client and Tag for lead tracking, you can skip this step.

Next, you’d want to create a new GTM Server Client using the imported template. In your GTM server container, navigate to the Clients tab and click New.

This will open up the client configuration page, where you can choose a client type to begin setup. Under Custom, select the Dub GTM Server Client template that you created in step 2.

Make sure your client configuration is set to the following:

Client Name: Dub GTM Server Client
Priority: 0
Request Path: /dub/track
Debug Logging: (optional)

Clients in GTM Server are adapters that act as bridges between the software running on a user’s device and your server container. They receive requests and transform them into events that can be processed by tags.

4. Import Dub GTM Server Tag Template

If you’ve already set up the Dub GTM Server Client and Tag for lead tracking, you can skip this step.

Next, you’ll want to import the Dub GTM Server Tag template to handle sales tracking. In your GTM server container, navigate to the Templates tab once again. Under Tag Templates, click the New button.

This will open up the Template Editor. In the top right corner, click on the ⋮ button and select Import.

Download the gtm-server-tag-template/template.tpl file and upload it to the Template Editor. You’ll see a preview of the template:

Click the Save button in the top right to save the template.

5. Add Sales Tracking Tag

Last but not least, you’ll want to create a new GTM Server Tag using the imported template. In your GTM server container, navigate to the Tags tab and click New.

This will open up the tag configuration page. Under Tag Configuration, select the Dub Conversion Tag server tag template that you created in step 4.

Make sure your tag configuration is set to the following:

Dub API Key: Your Dub API key (starts with dub_)
Event: Select “Track sale” from the dropdown
Customer External ID: customerExternalId from the event data
Amount: amount from the event data (in cents)
Currency: currency from the event data (e.g., “usd”)
Event Name: eventName from the event data (e.g., “Purchase”)
Payment Processor: paymentProcessor from the event data (e.g., “stripe”)
Invoice ID: Map to the invoiceId from the event data (optional)
Lead Event Name: Map to the leadEventName from the event data (optional)
Metadata: Map to the metadata from the event data (optional)

Under the Triggering section, configure when the tag should fire:

Click + to add a new trigger
Select Custom Event as the trigger type
Set the Event Name to match the event name from the Dub Server Client. Default is dub_conversion
Add a condition to filter for sales events:
- Variable: Select a variable that contains the event type
- Operator: Equals
- Value: “Purchase”
Name the trigger “Dub Sales Event Trigger” and save it

Here are the properties you can include when sending a sale event:

Property	Required	Description
`customerExternalId`	Yes	The unique ID of the customer in your system. Will be used to identify and attribute all future events to this customer.
`amount`	Yes	The amount of the sale in cents.
`paymentProcessor`	No	The payment processor that processed the sale (e.g. Stripe, Shopify). Defaults to “custom”.
`eventName`	No	The name of the event. Defaults to “Purchase”.
`invoiceId`	No	The invoice ID of the sale. Can be used as a idempotency key – only one sale event can be recorded for a given invoice ID.
`currency`	No	The currency of the sale. Defaults to “usd”.
`metadata`	No	An object containing additional information about the sale.

Testing your setup

You can test your GTM server setup by sending a curl request to your server URL with the appropriate query parameters:

curl "https://server-side-tagging-xxx-uc.a.run.app/dub/track/sale?\
dub_id=pAzVZ3jzwZXcLMDT&\
customerExternalId=user_1K0RN3SDNAC0C1WCW4BGRS3EW&\
amount=1000&\
currency=usd&\
eventName=Purchase&\
paymentProcessor=stripe&\
invoiceId=inv_123456789&\
leadEventName=Sign%20Up&\
mode=async"

Download GTM templates

To learn more about how to track sales with Google Tag Manager, check out the following templates:

Dub GTM Server Client Template

A GTM server-side client template for receiving lead and sale conversion events from web containers

Dub GTM Server Tag Template

A GTM server-side tag template for sending lead and sale conversion events from your GTM server container to Dub

View conversion results

And that’s it – you’re all set! You can now sit back, relax, and watch your conversion revenue grow. We provide 3 different views to help you understand your conversions:

Time-series: A time-series view of the number clicks, leads and sales.

Funnel chart: A funnel chart view visualizing the conversion & dropoff rates across the different steps in the conversion funnel (clicks → leads → sales).

Funnel chart view showing the conversion & dropoff rates from clicks → leads → sales

Real-time events stream: A real-time events stream of every single conversion event that occurs across all your links in your workspace.

Getting Started

Links

Analytics

Conversion tracking

Dub Partners

Integrations

Open source

Google Tag Manager

Prerequisites