The ROI Revolution Blog

Tracking Email Campaigns with Google Analytics

January 25, 2006

NOTE: Please see the UPDATE at the bottom of the article.

If you've ever sent out a mass email newsletter to your clients, you've probably found yourself pausing before clicking "Send" and wondering just how many people will actually open the thing, and of those, how many will find their way onto your site.

Google Analytics can help answer those questions, and a number of others, with its easy email tracking features. Open rate, click-through rate, and conversions can all be tracked within Google Analytics. You can even measure the effectiveness of your email campaign against your CPC, banner, and print campaigns.

It's extremely easy. You just insert a bit of code into your email's HTML, pop some tracking codes onto each link inside the email, and then push your campaign out to its recipients. We've created a handy little tool that will help you create the necessary HTML. Head over to our new Google Analytics Email Campaign Tracking Tool to generate both the code to insert in your email's HTML and the tagged links for your email's content. (Note: We have removed this page, due to the Update below)

After you send your email out, you can view the number of clicks, the rate of clicks, and the total impressions of your campaign in the Search Engine Marketing / CPC Program Analysis report within the Marketing Optimization panel. The data will also display under your other Marketing reports, with medium set to [email].

Now you'll have some excellent insight on how your e-mail campaigns are performing. More importantly, you'll know precisely how profitable each one is.

UPDATE:
As of March 15, 2006, the email impression tracking feature has been removed from Google Analytics. Because modern email programs often disable images by default, the reliability of impression tracking is questionable. Rather than provide innacurate data, Google Analytics has opted to remove the feature entirely. So, while it is still possible to tag all inbound links from your email campaign with UTM tracking codes (which can be generated via our Google Analytics Destination URL Builder), you can no longer utilize the Email Tracking Tool mentioned above.


Google Analytics for Online Advertisers
Here at ROI Revolution, we consider Google Analytics tracking essential for paid search, so it's included in our PPC Campaign Management service.

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Permalink | Comments ( 4 ) | TrackBacks ( 0 )

Filed under: Analytics
Tagged as: Email, Tracking

Posted by Mark Curtis, Paid Search Team Leader at 10:46 AM

Comments

K Keller said:

I sent the email out and used your email tracking tool. I am still not sure where to find the number of clicks, the rate of clicks, and the total impressions of your campaign.

March 15, 2006 10:58 AM

Michael Harrison said:

K, check out the Update posted above. Due to the unreliability of image-based email open-rate analytics, Google Analytics has disabled this feature. You can still track links within your email campaign, of course, but you'll no longer be able to examine open rate and impressions via the CPC Program Analysis report.

March 16, 2006 12:35 PM

Justin said:

I believe it was a mistake for Google to remove the email tracking feature. People are getting used to allowing images from trusted providers. Innaccurate data is better than no data.

May 30, 2007 10:10 PM

S B said:

Innaccurate data is worthless - you could quite easily spend money thinking that you had made an improvement to emails, when in fact it could be the opposite. I can't see how innaccurate data is of any help.

February 12, 2008 4:34 AM

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