Help · Tracking and postbacks
Why is my postback not firing?
Usually one of five things: the {sub1} macro comes through empty because the Click ID was never captured, the macro name is wrong, the destination rejects the request, the postback was auto-deactivated after 10 consecutive failures in 72 hours, or there is an HTTP/HTTPS mismatch. Check Reporting → Postback and View Debug Info first.
Start in Everflow, not your tracker. Open Reporting → Postback to see whether the postback fired and what response it got, and use View Debug Info on any row to see the exact request and response. Remember a postback only fires on a conversion: if the tracking link is not recording clicks, nothing downstream will trigger.
The five usual suspects
1. The macro comes through empty
{sub1} resolves to nothing. Almost always the Click ID was never captured: your landing page is not appending it, or the parameter name does not match what your tracker expects. Check a recent click in Everflow. If sub1 is blank there, the fix is at the link level, not the postback.
2. The macro name is wrong
Macros are case-sensitive. {Sub1}, {sub_1} and {sub-1} are all different strings to Everflow. None will substitute, and your destination receives the literal placeholder text. The common ones are {sub1}, {payout_amount}, {transaction_id}, {offer_id} and {sub2} to {sub5}.
3. Your destination is rejecting the request
A 400 response usually means a required parameter is missing, the URL was mangled by a manual edit, your destination wants POST and you sent GET, or an auth token expired. The Postback report shows the exact response code and body. Google, Meta, TikTok and Reddit need authenticated POST requests through their Conversions APIs, so a plain GET postback straight to them will fail. Route through a tracker.
4. The postback was auto-deactivated
After 10 consecutive failures within 72 hours, Everflow turns a postback off. This applies to postbacks, not pixels. Any 2xx response, including 204 No Content, counts as a success. Fix the cause, confirm the destination returns 200 OK, then re-enable it.
The most common cause is a Global postback expecting a parameter only one traffic source sends, for example a field that is empty on everything except Meta traffic. Switch that postback to Specific and scope it to the one offer that needs it.
5. Protocol or domain mismatch
Usually an HTTPS-only destination given an HTTP postback URL. Modern endpoints reject it without a helpful error. Default to HTTPS.
Other things to check
- You have only one postback on the conversion event. Duplicates create reconciliation headaches.
- The tracking type is right: Conversion for subscriptions, Event for signups.
- The braces in the URL were not URL-encoded when you pasted it.
Escalate with details
Send your affiliate manager the postback URL you are using (with secret tokens removed), the destination platform, and the response code Everflow logs in the Postback report. That is usually enough to diagnose it in one pass.