Knowledge Base/4.0 Promoting and Distributing/4.3 Targeting and Tracking your Audience

Google analytics - Tracking email clicks with campaigns

Nathan Virtue
posted this on July 20, 2011 06:49 pm

Google analytics does not automatically track traffic sources from emails like it does with website traffic so you need to do a little extra work to track email clicks specifically.

First you need to use google's URL builder tool: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

Fill out the required fields(see Google URL Builder image below for reference):

  1. Website URL:  Use your issue link in this field BUT make sure you append a page number ("/0" for cover, "/3" for 4th page etc)
  2. Campaign Source: Enter a name for the campaign source.  You could use the name of your publication
  3. Campaign Medium: Enter the word "email" in this field
  4. Campaign Name:  Enter a name for your campaign for your reference in Google Analytics
  5. Click "Generate URL" button
  6. Copy and paste the specially generated URL in your email campaigns

Google URL Builder image

GoogleAnalytics-URL_Builder_for_email.png

 

Once users start clicking on the link in your email campaign, and the data begins to propagate (could take up to 24 hours), you can access the link performance through Google analytics in the Traffic Sources>Campaigns section (see Image below).

 GoogleAnalytics-CampaignTraffic.png

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