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?utm_campaign=fall-sale&utm_medium=email&u...
And another email link that looks like this:
http://www.mysite.com/page.php?prodid=100
Should be modified like this:
http://www.mysite.com/page.php?prodid=100&utm_campaign=fall-sale&utm_med...
When someone lands on your site after clicking on a tagged link, GA removes the information from the URL and stores it in a cookie. Because the info now resides on your machine (in the cookie) GA can associate all visitor actions (like conversions and transactions) with the email.