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Analytics Talk Untangling the world of web analytics Home About Me Contact Search this website … Search You are here: Home / Analysis / Tracking Email with Google Analytics Tracking Email with Google Analytics November 4, 2008 By Justin Cutroni 81 Comments 24 Thanks for visiting! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or connect via Twitter . In the past few weeks I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to track email with Google Analytics. While I did cover the broad topic of online ad tracking in a previous series of posts, email tracking has certain nuances that I think should be addressed. The Concept Tracking email campaigns in Google Analytics is done using a process called link tagging. This process is the manipulation of the links in your emails. Here’s a sample link that might appear in an email: http://www.mysite.com/page.php To track it with Google Analytics it would be modified like this: http://www.mysite.com/page.php?utm_campaign=fall-sale&utm_medium=email& utm_source=female-list And another email link that looks like this: http://www.mysite.com/page.php?prodid=100 Tracking Email with Google Analytics – Analytics Talk http://cutroni.com/blog/2008/11/04/email-tracking-with-googl... 1 of 31 07/09/11 12:20 PM

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Analytics Talk

Untangling the world of web analytics

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You are here: Home / Analysis / Tracking Email with Google Analytics

Tracking Email with Google AnalyticsNovember 4, 2008 By Justin Cutroni 81 Comments

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Thanks for visiting! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or connectvia Twitter.

In the past few weeks I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how to track email with GoogleAnalytics. While I did cover the broad topic of online ad tracking in a previous series of posts,email tracking has certain nuances that I think should be addressed.

The ConceptTracking email campaigns in Google Analytics is done using a process called link tagging. Thisprocess is the manipulation of the links in your emails. Here’s a sample link that might appear inan email:

http://www.mysite.com/page.php

To track it with Google Analytics it would be modified like this:

http://www.mysite.com/page.php?utm_campaign=fall-sale&utm_medium=email&utm_source=female-list

And another email link that looks like this:

http://www.mysite.com/page.php?prodid=100

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Should be modified like this:

http://www.mysite.com/page.php?prodid=100&utm_campaign=fall-sale&utm_medium=email&utm_source=female-list

When someone lands on your site after clicking on a tagged link, GA removes the informationfrom the URL and stores it in a cookie. Because the info now resides on your machine (in thecookie) GA can associate all visitor actions (like conversions and transactions) with the email.Pretty slick, huh?

How Link Tagging Works

What is all that info I added to the URL? They’re called link tagging parameters. The name of theparameter is on the left side of the equal sign and the value of the parameter is on the right side.

Each parameter represents a different attribute of your email. Looking at the example above wecan identifiy the following parameters and their values:

utm_campaign=fall-saleutm_medium=emailutm_source=female-list

Each one is identified by the Google Analytics tracking code and helps GA understand that thevisitor arrived on your site via an email.

You must use the parameters that Google provides. However, you can specify any value for eachparameter. This is where the real power lies. By using your own values for each parameter you canadd markting information, that is specific to your business, to GA. We’ll get to where thatinformation appears in a second.

[ NOTE: All you advanced user may be calling my bluff here. You can rename the link taggingparameters that GA uses, but it is an advanced technique that requires a change to the GA trackingcode. I'm not going to cover it in this post but you can learn more in the GA help section. ]

Let’s look at each link tagging parameters and some of the logical values for each.

utm_campaign

This parameter identifies the marketing campaign that the email belongs to. It may be that thisemail is just one part of a bigger online marketing strategy. For example, you may be using paidsearch, some display advertising and this email to reach new prospects. You can group this emailwith other marketing activities by using a common value of utm_campaign.

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As for suggested values, use something that represents the campaign that your running.

utm_medium

The medium parameter describes how the message got the to visitor. In the case of email Irecommend that you always use the same value. I like to use ‘email’. It’s short and pretty darndescriptive.

Using a single value consolidates all email generated traffic into a single line item in the reports.

utm_source

This is where things get interesting. Traditionally, in link tagging, the source is the ‘who’ attribute.It describes who you’re working with to push a message out. But how does the concept of ‘who’map to an email?

When it comes to email I like to think of the ‘who’ as the list of recipients that you’re sending themessage to. This may be a segment of your email list (like a specific gender segment, age segmentof purchase history segment) or your entire email list. For example, some potential utm_sourcevalues might be:

utm_source=gender:femaleutm_source=gender:allutm_source=purchase:last-30-daysutm_source=purchase:last-60-daysutm_source=purchase:free-shipping-offer

The key here is that by identifying the segment in the utm_source parameter you’ll be able tomeasure the performance of that segment in GA. You are segmenting your email list, right?

utm_content

The final parameter is named utm_content and helps us test emails. The content parameteridentifies the actual content of the email. So if you’re producing different versions of the email foran A/B test you can mesaure the performance of each by varying the value of utm_content. Forexample:

utm_content=free-shipping-offerutm_content=20-off-offerutm_content=product-creative

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utm_content=value-creative

Some folks like to use utm_content to describe not only the version of the email that the recipientreceived, but also the actual location of the link in the email.

utm_content=top-navutm_content=call-to-actionutm_content=image-link

Sometimes this can be overkill as it leads to a lot of very granular data. Normally we just use thisto measure which email variation performed better.

Think about how powerful this can be. Using utm_content and utm_source you can measurethe performance of a specific message to a specific segment of your customer base (i.e. emaillist). This is a great way to measure if you’re sending the right message to the right person!

How to Tag Your LinksSo now that we know what paramters we can use to track our email, how do we actually tag thelinks? It starts by assigning a value to each parameters. You could use the Google Analytics URLbuilder: a free tool in the GA help center. Just enter a value for each parameter, along with theURL from your email, and the tool will automatically generate a tagged URL that you can place inyour email.

But I find the URL builder can be cumbersome when tagging a large number of links. Just think ofall the links that you might have in a single email!

Instead I use a small Google Spreadsheet that has a built in formula. Just enter your campaignvalues in the columns, along with the URLs from your email, and drag a pre-programmed formulato automatically created your tagged URLs. Then place the URLs in your email.

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epikone_link_tagging_tool : tagged links

EpikOne Link Tagging ToolCreated by EpikOne, Inc.

EpikOne assumes no liability for use of this tool. Use at your own risk.To get a better understanding of link tagging and how it is used in Google analytics pleasesee the following support articles:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27252&hl=enhttp://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27254&hl=en"

Instructions"Using this tool, you can automatically create large numbers of tagged destination URLs.

You may have noticed that a tagged URL is pretty ugly. If you’re sending an HTML email to youcan hide the long URL using an anchor tag, but if you’re using a text based email the recipient willsee the entire crappy URL. Try using a service like Tiny URL to hide the query string parameters.

I should note that some email platforms (the cool ones!) have begun to integrate GA link tagginginto their tools. Check with your email provider to see if they offer this service.

The ReportingAs I mentioned before, the values used in your link tags get pulled directly into Google Analytics.Each parameter becomes the foundation for a report. Let’s start with the Traffic Sources >Campaigns report:

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This report lists all the values of your utm_campaign parameters. You can measure theperformance of your email campaigns by finding the values you use for utm_campaign. But beaware, this report will also contain the titles of your AdWords ad campaigns. They’reautomatically imported from AdWords. Also remember that you might use the same value ofutm_campaign in activities other than email.

Remember utm_source and utm_medium? We can drill into a campaign to determine how theemail medium, for a specific source, performed in the campaign. Select a campaign by clicking onthe name. Then use the dimension drop down to view all the sources within the campaign.

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The above report shows just one source within this campaign, but that’s all that was used. Theimportant thing to understand is how you can see certain sources, specifically email segments,contributed to the success of a campaign.

But what about evaluating a source across multiple campaigns? Try using the Traffic Sources >All Traffic Sources report:

The first column shows all sources and mediums, so in our case we can see how a segment of theemail list performed cross all campaigns. We can quickly filter this report by ‘email’, the medium,to identify how well a segment performed. Remember how

What about the utm_content parameter? Where can we find that data? It’s in the Traffic Sources >Ad Versions report.

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Here’s where we can evaluate the performance of our different email variations. The Ad Versionsreport not only contains the values from utm_content, but also the titles from your AdWordscampaigns. This is another piece of data that GA automatically pulls in.

And let’s not forget that all of these reports have three tabs full of metrics: site usage, goalconversions and ecommerce (if you choose to use ecommerce tracking). All of these metricsprovide insight into the sales or conversion process.

Bounce rate provides insight into the begining of the process. A high bounce rate probablyindicates a disconnect between the message in the email and the content on the landing page.

You can quickly switch to the goal conversions tab to measure the other end of the process bylooking at the conversion rate for your email. And if you’re using the ecommerce tab you can lookat a metric like revenue to qualify the conversion rate.

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Don’t Forget the Pre Click DataWhile all this data is great, don’t forget that your email provider has a number of metrics that giveinsight into what happened before the visitor arrived on your site. Such metrics include # emailssent, # emails received, # bounces, # emails opened and click throughs.

I know that metrics like open rate are inherently flawed due to the tracking technology, but youcan’t evaluate things like subject line effectiveness using the data in GA. Don’t be afraid to look atmetrics like # of bounces when evaluating the performance of email.

Create your Advanced SegmentWith GA’s new Advanced Segments we can really drill into the email traffic segment. At the veryleast, you should create one advanced segment to evaluate email traffic.

To create the advanced segment use the ‘medium’ dimension and enter a value of ‘email’.Remember, ‘email’ is the value we used for utm_medium in the link tagging. Talk about comingfull circle!

Using an advanced segment helps you easily identify what content the email segment foundinteresting, if they converted, how well the progressed through various processes, etc.

Common ProblemsThe most common problem we see with link tagging is that people forget to tag their links. Linktagging is usually a process related issue, not a tech related issue. Before your organization sendsany email communication make sure the links are tagged.

A simple way to test your links is to send the email to a few coworkers and ask them to click onsome links. In a few hours you should see the data in your GA reports.

The second most common problem has to do with redirects. Many times a site may have a redirectthat strips off the campaign tracking parameters. The simple test mentioned above should tell youif you have a redirect issue. Remember, when you click on a tagged link you should see your linktagging parameters in the URL of your site.

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A Note on PrivacyA few people have mentioned that it is possible to add a visitor’s email address to your GA datausing link tagging. While this is possible, keep in mind the GA terms of service specificallyforbids the collection of personally identifiable information with Google Analytics.

If you’re still reading, and you’re trying to understand how to track other types of online ads, thenyou may be interested in these posts:

Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 1: Link TaggingPart 2: EpikOne Link Tagging ToolPart 3: Reports and Analysis

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And how about checking out these related posts:

Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 1: Link Tagging1.Give Me What I Want and I’ll Do What You Ask2.Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 3: Reports and Analysis3.Tracking Offline Advertising With Google Analytics4.Google Analytics Campaign Tracking Pt. 2: The EpikOne Link Tagging Tool5.

Filed Under: Analysis, Campaign Tracking, Tracking, Web Analytics Tagged With: camapigntracking, email-marketing, email-tracking, link-tagging

Comments

David Burke says:November 5, 2008 at 11:21 pm

Hi Justin,Great post! I was wondering: What are your thoughts on using the Keyword (utm_term)parameter for additional segmentation?

I’ve noticed the Keywords report in GA currently shows only terms from Search & not fromall campaigns.

Thanks!

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Justin Cutroni says:November 7, 2008 at 12:22 am

Hi David,

I have seen some people use utm_term to pull more info into GA and I have mixed feelings.While it can lead to extra data it can also lead to confusing data in other reports.

My belief is that you can get enough segmentation without using utm_term, but if you needit then go for it. Just use filters to keep your data clean.

If you do choose to use the urm_term parameter the value will not appear in the Keywordsreport. The reason is that those reports only contain data from a medium that includeskeywords (organic, ppc, cpc, etc). An ‘email’ centric utm_term value will only be availablevia segmentation.

Thanks for the comment,

Justin

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Béate Vervaecke says:November 9, 2008 at 6:07 am

A very concise article!Just for clarification, it should be nice to ad/explain the fact that a campaign can appear upto 6 months after its’ launch, because of the way Google Analytics works?

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Gavin Doolan says:November 18, 2008 at 6:44 am

Hi Justin,Great article, I only wish you had written it about a year ago :). Not to worry. I’ve beenmeaning to write one similar for a while now.

I’ve always wondered if there was a way to measure open rates with Analytics, I guess fromyour post there isn’t.

I know some email providers place a beacon gif file in emails so that you can track openrates, but do you know of anyway you could report on this beacon gif (download rate) inAnalytics?

You also mentioned utm parameters being stripped from url’s I noticed that my ISP does thisto all emails my old company used to send out, but services like gmail, yahoo! were ok.Does using a service like Tiny URL prevent this?

Cheers and good post.

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Gavin

Justin Cutroni says:November 22, 2008 at 11:39 pm

Hey Gavin,

Way back when Analytics first launched, they did track open rates using a beacon. However,so many email clients block beacons and other images, that Google decided to remove thefunctionality as it was too unreliable.

As for your second question, yes, I’m pretty sure TinyURL will help you get around anyparameter stripping issues because a TinyURL does not include any query string parameters.

Thanks for reading and glad you like the post.

Justin

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Amitabh says:November 25, 2008 at 12:34 am

HiI tried the same technique above and this was my code that i added“http://www.website.com/index.html&utm_source=Internal_test_mailblast&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=EmailTest”.

But this doesnt work for me,it landed on the 404 page that we have set on the server. Couldyou please suggest some way to fix this. what could the errors be, and how does this getlinked with google analytics when there is no reference of GA code in this,

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E-Marketing says:November 25, 2008 at 4:00 pm

Great post, I have been doing something similarone problem I get is seeing a medium of “unknown” in the reports. Can this be caused byusing this method?

Also do you think its possible to use this data to add it back into a CRM system as a leadsource? Have you had any expierence of integrating GA with CRM.. I have not heard of anythat do not try to push their own analytics

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Jill Cote says:December 2, 2008 at 11:57 am

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I’m looking to track when visitors to my site click on out-bound links, such as a mailto link.I’ve heard that Google’s new Event Tracking will do that automatically but I’m gettingmixed messages. Do you have any information about this? I would greatly appreciate anydirection you can offer. Thanks Again,

Jill

Erik says:December 2, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Hello,

Thank you for the very thorough article. Is Béate posted correct? Can it really take up to 6months for a campaign to appear in Analytics?

I ask because I just ran my first email campaign using the Link Builder tool (same URL forall links) last week but I don’t see the data anywhere in Analytics.

I can see older email campaigns that other people had run earlier this year, but not mine. Thecampaign tested fine (using the method you describe) but the data is nowhere to be found inAnalytics.

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Cleo says:December 10, 2008 at 9:15 am

Can i translate your post to my blog (english/portuguese)? It’s very important and nobodyhave a post about this subject in Brazil. Thanks a lot!

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Louis says:December 11, 2008 at 11:28 am

Justin, great post.

Having trouble with the EpikOne spreadsheet, when I click through the URL and start to useit says I can’t edit. Any advice? Thanks, Louis

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Jorge Cunha says:December 18, 2008 at 9:28 am

Nice Article i have done the same.

Best Regards

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Jake says:December 22, 2008 at 10:02 am

Great article Justin

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AlanW says:December 24, 2008 at 9:27 am

Does the site’s GA script need to be included in the email itself?

Thank You!

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E-Business Card CD says:January 2, 2009 at 10:26 pm

I started tracking all my emails and have been amazed at just how many people go to myweb site from my email. Of course, I put some incentives such as you can see this video orthat video, the 3D animation or that presentation. It is important to give them a really goodreason to go to your web site, but if you do, track it and see what works and what doesn’t.

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Greg Moore says:January 16, 2009 at 1:07 pm

Justin,

A crystal clear post. Very nice, very helpful.

This makes me wonder, what insights do you commonly find while looking at these GoogleAnalytics reports on email campaigns?

What changes and optimizations are commonly suggested by evaluating the data in theseGoogle Analytics reports?

Best wishes and thanks.

- Greg

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Brad Warthan says:January 17, 2009 at 1:18 pm

Justin, this is a great article on tracking email with Google Analytics.

You allude to the Google Analytics privacy policy about it not “collecting” personally-

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identifiable information such as email addresses. But what about passing along a referenceid that is unique to a customer on an email list. Would that violate the TOS/privacy policy?

Brad Warthan

Søren Sprogø says:January 20, 2009 at 7:51 am

Simply a brilliant article, that I often use to explain to my customers how to do proppercampaign tracking!

However I think there’s one thing that isn’t formulated correctly:

“When someone lands on your site after clicking on a tagged link, GA removes theinformation from the URL and stores it in a cookie…”

GA doesn’t actually _remove_ the information from the URL, as this would require GA todo a redirect to the same URL, but without the parameters. True, it doesn’t store the URLwith the parameters, but the way it is currently formulated it can be misunderstood.

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Søren Sprogø says:January 20, 2009 at 7:54 am

A question:

If you fx. use tagging to track traffic coming in from a banner campaign to a unique landingpage, and Google first encounter this new LP via the banner link, does it store the page in itsorganic index with or without the parameters?

Can the Google Bot recognize these parameters and remove them before putting the page inits index, or can you suddenly risk getting a lot of organic traffic in from a campaign thatyou actually track to be something else?

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Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:33 pm

Hey Amit,

There might be two problems here:

1. You need a question mark between index.html and utm_source

2. Your server might be configured to redirect the visitor to a 404 page when unknown querystring parameters are added to the URL.

I’m pretty sure it’s one, or both, of those issues. Hope that helps,

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Justin

Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:34 pm

Hey E-Marketing,

Yes, you can use some of this data in your CRM. Check out this post:

Integrating Google Analytics with a CRM

Justin

21.

Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:35 pm

Jill,

Eventually GA will have automatic outbound link tracking, but it has not been implementedyet. Until Google rolls out this feature you’ll need to manually add code, be it event trackingor pageview, to links that you want to track.

Justin

22.

Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:37 pm

Erik,

You should see the data very quickly, usually within 3 hours. If you don’t see the data thenthere may have been a problem with the tracking.

Justin

23.

Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:38 pm

Alan W,

No, you do not need to add the GA tracking code to the actual email. Just make sure you tagthe links in your email and that you have installed the GA tracking code on your site.

Justin

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Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Hey Louis,

You can’t edit the spread sheet, but feel free to export it and use it in Excel, or upload it intoyour own Google Account.

Justin

25.

Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:49 pm

Greg,

I think people focus on a lot of different metrics. First, bounce rate. That’s a great indicatorof how well the message in your email matches the landing page. Then move on to thingsthat show engagement: PV/V and time on site. Finally, conversions. Did your email actuallysell your product or service? I think a lot of people also look at how well different variationsof the email performed.

Hope that helps you evaluate your email performance!

Justin

26.

Justin Cutroni says:February 11, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Hi Brad,

A lot of people want to pass a reference ID in the URL, which I think is fine. But theproblem is that the ID becomes a pageview level piece of data. All it tells you is that aspecific person from email saw the landing page. It doesn’t tell you anything aboutconversions. Plus, it’s also going to create a HUGE number of unique URLs, and thuspollute your pageview data.

I prefer to pull the data into a CRM to match visitors with email and other marketinginitiatives.

Check out this post on integrating GA with a CRM.

Justin

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Justin Cutroni says:28.

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February 11, 2009 at 12:53 pm

Soren,

Technically, you’re right! It does not remove the data from the URL. It really just ignores it.Thanks for pointing that out!

Justin

reddy says:February 18, 2009 at 6:09 am

Hi Brad,

I am trying to tracking email with google anlytics,i iapplied the same javascript code in webpage,i sent the newsletter but i am not getting emails in google anlytics.

How to get the email id’s in google analytics, please send me the reply

29.

Dan says:March 10, 2009 at 3:55 pm

This is a great post and very thorough but all the posts I’ve seen don’t say whether you alsoneed to include the ga.js tracking code above the tag of your email? Adding the ?utm codeafter a url is fine but you tie it to the UA-xxxxxx account by adding the urchin code in yourbody?

Can anyone verify this? I created a sub domain to track the email separately and it doescreate a new UA-xxxxx-1 number. What about if you include links to other sites, say to thewiki or google search, whereby running tests on the users click preferences?

I’m nervous of having all the analytics merged in with my site analytics and want to monitorcampaigns separately.

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Justin Cutroni says:March 12, 2009 at 8:17 am

Hey Dan,

No, you don’t need to add the ga.js tracking code to your email.

Campaign data will be tracked regardless of the account number. All of the campaigninformation is stored in cookies, and GA picks up the value in the cookies regardless of theaccount number.

Hope that helps,

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Justin

Dan says:March 12, 2009 at 8:24 am

Thanks Justin. On the subject of tracking, can you use analytics to verify the address is stillactive, or in other words what emails opened the mail?

I was thinking of using a unique code in the utm content or source, that I could refer back tothe original email list and remove the dead ones. On the down side I see this beingimpractical on large lists as the information would not be available from GA?

This would tie more than just a visit to GA if it worked but an actual user to a location basedon opening the email. Any thoughts?

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Justin Cutroni says:March 12, 2009 at 8:39 am

Hey Dan,

You could try something like that. But as you point out, if you have more than 100 emailaddresses it’s going to be a total pain in the ass to reconcile who opened the email and whodid not.

GA is really meant to be a post-click, aggregate data tool.

You may want to check with different email providers to see if anyone offers that level ofreporting.

Hope that helps,

Justin

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K Fisher says:April 12, 2009 at 11:30 am

Hi on the subject of email tracking, I am looking to create newsletters for multiple clients (Iwork in the B2B magazine market) so we feature editorials from a wide range of clients, canI use the techniques outlined above to track activity going to sites which are not owned byus? We are aiming to test how effective our newsletters are for driving traffic to ourcustomers sites.

Can this technique be applied in this situation (where it would not be feasible to have accessto add GA tracking code to their pages).

Ive yet to sign up yet, as the first question is what is your website url, we arent looking at

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this time to monitor our websites as they are in the process of being redeveloped.

Im probably / hopefully thinking about a problem that doesnt exist? Could you confirmwhether I can use this technique? Sorry if Ive over – explained this question.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Kate

Justin Cutroni says:April 16, 2009 at 3:25 pm

Kate,

If I read your question correctly, you’re not suing Google Analytics. While you can still tagyour links as I described above, you’ll need some type of analytics tool to collect yourwebsite data. No analytics, no insight!

Hope that helps,

Justin

35.

Mark says:April 24, 2009 at 4:57 pm

How do you track an email hyperlink on your site using onclick?

36.

Justin Cutroni says:April 30, 2009 at 8:23 am

Mark,

It’s a bit out of date, but try this post on tracking clicks with Google Analytics.

Thanks for the question,

Justin

37.

Gaurav says:May 2, 2009 at 3:34 am

Hello Everybody,Can I track the following features using google analytics?

1. Who opens the email?

38.

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2. Who they forward to / Did they forward to anyone?3. How many emails have been sent succesfully?4. How many emails have been bounced?

Tom S. says:May 5, 2009 at 1:54 pm

Thanks for the great in-depth post.

I was experimenting with the spreadsheet and for some reason it only works if i use ahyphen in the utm_term field. If i add any text in that field the URL disappears.

I’m not great with Excel so i assume I’m doing something wrong. Any thoughts?

THanks again.-Tom

39.

Justin Cutroni says:May 8, 2009 at 6:10 pm

Gaurav: GA can not track who opened the email or if they forwarded the email. Nor can ittrack how many emails were sent or bounced. Those are things you should be tracking inyour email distribution tool.

Tom:Thanks for the heads up! We’ll try to fix that ASAP.

Thanks for the comments and thanks for reading the blog!

Justin

40.

Dan PPC Proz says:May 11, 2009 at 10:58 am

now that GA goals can be imported into conversion tracking…

is it possible to create a goal for a click on an email link?

41.

A.Hariri says:May 14, 2009 at 12:14 pm

WOW.

That’s the best post I have ever seen so far explaining link tagging and how to do that.

Thank you very much!

42.

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I am new to Analytics but I was able to understand a LOT from you!

Justin Cutroni says:May 18, 2009 at 3:54 pm

Dan,

If I may read into your question a bit, you’re asking if it’s possible to create a goal issomeone clicks on a link in an email? If so, no. We can not create goals for clicks withing anemail. The reason is that the click happens in the email, and we can’t add GA into the email.We can only track the visitor once they arrive on the site.

Hope I’m reading your question right.

Justin

43.

Gidseo says:May 26, 2009 at 11:04 am

Hi,Just wanted to say thank you for the clear and concise info and instructions.CheersG

44.

g. mertz says:June 3, 2009 at 3:24 pm

Visitors to our website who access it from General Santos City, are not shown in GoogleAnalytics as having accessed the site from that city. I have yet to have one single hitregistered as such.

I believe hits from GenSan are being attributed to the city of Davao, a city found at a greatdistance from GenSan.

Why does General Santos City,a city of approximately a half of a million people, notregister on my Google Analytics?

I would ask Google directly. But, you need ground penetrating radar to find a Google emailportal where they will accept a question they would be willing answer.

45.

Trevor says:June 10, 2009 at 8:41 am

Just dl’ed this sheet for my use. DEFINITELY saves time over using the Google tool.

46.

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Thanks, guys!

Also, an *excellent* primer on how to use GA for email recipient tracking, and one I’vereferred to often enough myself. An all-around good effort.

Justin Cutroni says:July 8, 2009 at 8:53 pm

Hey Trevor,

Thanks, glad you like the link tagging sheet.

g. mertz,

Geo location data is done based on the IP address of the visitor. While this is fairly reliable,it’s not 100% accurate and there can be errors. I think you’re just seeing some of the normalinconsistencies with geo based data.

Thanks for the comments,

Justin

47.

nacho says:October 8, 2009 at 2:05 pm

from my experience, shortened urls (bit.ly et al) are less effective than long urls. Users don’tlike them.

48.

Mmarq says:June 6, 2011 at 4:33 pm

Justin,

I realize you wrote this several years ago, but I’m hoping you can still help. I’ve beenresearching this for weeks now and trying to find a way to track a click to a PDF from ane-mail. The PDF is not on the website itself, so is this not possible?

I’ve checked EventTracker, tried campaigns, but nothing seems to track the click. The latestI tried was adding this hyperlink to the e-mail:

http://www. aac.joinvacation.com/training/NextStepsEZcruise.pdf” onClick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/EZCNextSteps’);

Because the PDF isn’t on the site and you never actually hit the site, is there a way to addthe tracker code to the link itself?

49.

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Please help – I’m desperate.

Justin Cutroni says:June 14, 2011 at 8:28 am

@Mmarq: Tracking a PDF from an email is a tough challenge. The problem is that there isno place to fire the JavaScript. You could try to put the JS in the HTML of the email but thatis not very reliable. I would try the following:

1. Direct the visitor to some type of re-direct page.

2. On this page put a slight delay and execute the GA tracking code along with your eventtracking code.

3. Then direct the visitor to the PDF.

Hope that helps,

Justin

50.

Trackbacks

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Tagging. It’s an in depth resource that I found very insightful. If you’re doing any kind ofemail marketing I recommend you give this one a read. [...]

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Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite! » Blog Archive » Internet Marketing Links &Comments says:November 6, 2008 at 9:07 am

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Tracking (and Increasing) Emailer Response with Google Analytics « Geo Targeted LocalAdvertising | Local SEO | Local Search | Optimized Craigslist | Google Local BusinessCenter says:May 18, 2009 at 7:01 pm

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[...] Tracking Email with Google AnalyticsTracking email campaigns in Google Analytics isdone using a process called link tagging. This process is the manipulation of the links inyour emails. [...]

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[...] U ovom postu želim pokazati način na koji se to može ostvariti. Ponukan sam člankomkoji je napisao Justin Cutroni iz Epikone, jer vjerujem da i naši ljudi koji nisu toliko upućeniu tokove takvih informacija da nađu sve što trebaju na ovom blogu. Nadam se da ćebudućnost pokazati da i kod nas ima kvalitetnih ljudi/firmi koji(e) mogu voditi računa oposlovnim odlukama na osnovi danih podataka. Članak pročitajte ovdje. [...]

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Cool Spreadsheet for Faster Email Link Tagging with Google Analytics — Jack Nguyen -Online Marketing Blog says:January 26, 2010 at 8:00 pm

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written by Justin Cutroni called Tracking Email with Google Analytics [...]

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27.

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