How to track email campaign in Google Analytics

    by Emily Bronte
    27.09.2021

    Google analytics email tracking

    When you start sending email campaigns, what kind of result do you run for? Maybe you want to monitor who receives and reads your message… or want to track clicks, sales, and conversions generated by newsletter?

    You will be able to choose the email marketing metrics to track after you decide what your main goal is. Open rate, click through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, complaint rate, unsubscribe rate, spam rate, − there are lots of metrics to choose from.

    So, while you think about goals and choose the metrics, we are going to tell you about the most popular service for monitoring and tracking email campaigns − Google Analytics (GA).

    Google Analytics can provide you with a range of specialized tools for email tracking to analyze email campaign profit and performance results.

    Read the article to know more about email tracking in Google Analytics.

    For convenient management of emails use email studio. We also have a great email list manager for managing email lists. Using the mail extractor, you can collect email addresses for sending letters.

    Using Google Analytics to track email campaigns: Step by step guidelines

    Here we want to give you all details of tracking email campaigns with Google Analytics. Frankly speaking, it is technically a bit more difficult than just writing email content, so it will probably take more of your time and effort to get things in order and learn how it works.

    Step 1. Sign in and Create a Google Analytics Account for email tracking

    Unlike lots of Google free services (Gmail, Hangouts, etc.) you don’t get automatic access to GA. Be ready to confirm that you are a website owner and have access to it. These are protective measures from hackers.

    As Google Analytics is a web-based service, thus you should register and create a personal GA account.

    After that, you’ll get access to Google Analytics email tracking tools, and see how the subscribers interact with your site after reading your branded mass mailings.

    Your account will contain monitoring data on each email campaign you send.

    Step 2. Add the Email Tracking Code

    Google Analytics service works with JavaScript code to track the website visitors' actions. The webpage loads and the code starts working. It starts sending information about the user:

    • where he came from,
    • what buttons and links he clicked,
    • what type of web-browser he used, and others.

    But email clients do not load JavaScript when opening the email. The solution is to add special parameters to URLs in your email message.

    UTM parameters for Google Analytics

    Tracking links in Google Analytics

    To see the result of email campaigns in Google Analytics you should generate special links.

    When a user clicks the marked link and goes to a web-page, the information about his/her behavior and actions is stored in your Google Analytics account. As a result, you will be able to see clicks, conversions, and conversion rates for each email campaign.

    This means that you need to add specific UTM parameters for Google Analytics email tracking. After that campaign URL will be followed with variables and the link syntax will appear like this:

    https://www.massmailsoftware.com/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=big-summer-sale-2019

    Don’t worry, there is no need to learn and add these variables by yourself. Usually, both online bulk mail services and desktop programs have integration tools to make your life easy.

    For example, in Atomic Mail Sender you can generate the link without any difficulties:

    Use Google Analytics tracking in Atomic Mail Sender

    Choose the “Google Analytics” in the Service menu and check the box to enable tracking.

    Here you find the required UTM parameter (marked with *) – Campaign Name. It is used to identify the campaign among others and find the information about it in your GA account.
    As for the two other UTM parameters, they are not required:

    • "Campaign Term" — the keywords of the marketing campaign. For example, “sport shoes”.
    • "Campaign Content" — is used to differentiate between ads or links that point to the same URL. For example, logo-link or text-link.

    You can see the final link syntax only after testing the campaign because parameters are added to the letter when sending a message.

    Have a look at the screenshot above. The final URL will be the following:

    https://www.massmailsoftware.com/?utm_source=AtomicMailSender&utm_medium=email& utm_campaign=big-summer-sale-2019

    However, you can use the URL Builders to add campaign parameters to the link and copy/paste such URL to the email.

    For sample, URL Builder from Tilda:

    1. To generate tracking links for Google Analytics just fill next boxes:

    How to track an email

    1. You’ll get the link for tracking email campaigns in Google Analytics:

    Google analytics tracking links

    The important notes about tracking links in Google Analytics:

    • Google Analytics does not track redirects that have no embedded GA code. It’s better to use direct links with UTM parameters.
    • Using Google Analytics to track email campaigns, do not include special characters in the campaign name or other parameters. These can break URLs and you won’t get any tracking data.
    • Always test your bulk campaigns that use Google Analytics email tracking. Make sure all the links are correct and work properly.

    To make your work on email campaigns even more effective, we have developed software for email harvester on your computer. Then, using an automatic mass mailer, you can make mass mailings. When all emails are sent, track them conveniently with the email tracker software.

    Step 3. Monitor and Analyze the Email Campaign Results in Google Analytics Account

    For tracking open emails, conversation rates, etc in Google Analytics do the next:

    1. Go to your Google Analytics account. If you have multiple accounts, then navigate to your view.
    1. Open the menu, then select Acquisitions > All Traffic > and find the necessary campaign by the “Source/Medium” parameter.

    Email campaign google analytics

    Open Rate Tracking in Google Analytics for Hardworking Person

    This is very cool, you say. Nevertheless, what if you send emails via email client and use no additional tools like software or service. How to track whether the subscriber opened the newsletter?
    In this case, you can use an email tracking pixel, a kind of image with an embedded Google Analytics email tracking code.

    Email Tracking Pixel

    Email Tracking Pixel Example

    How does Google Analytics email tracking pixel work?

    When a subscriber opens the email he received, the email content is loading and the image is also requested to load. Google server pings this action and tracks the opening, keeping the information about open rate email marketing metric into GA account.

    How to create email tracking images for Google Analytics?

    We are going to operate with specific parameters as Google Analytics service required.

    The basic URL structure is https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1
    where google-analytics.com is the link to GA server and collect?v=1 means that we are going to collect data using this link.

    The required parameters are interlinked with “&” sign. They are the following:

    • tid = your personal Google Analytics tracking ID
    • cid = customer (subscriber) ID
    • t = hit type event
    • ec = event category, it’s an email for our bulk campaign
    • ea = event action, the action we are going to monitor; its open for our campaign
    • cs = campaign source
    • cm = campaign medium
    • cn = campaign name
    • dp = directory path, it’s the path to the pixel (image). Use “%2” instead of “/” in URL (%2Femail%2Fnewsletter)
    • dt = directory title, it’s the title of the tracked item. Use “%20” instead of space in URL (my%20newsletter)

    Add these parameters to the basic URL and get the following link:

    https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=YOURACCOUNTID&cid=CUSTOMERID&t=EVENTTYPE&ec=email&ea=open &cs=newsletter&cm=email&cn=big-summer-sale-2019&dp=%2Femail%2Fnewsletter&dt=my%20newsletter

    Note: to add this code into your email you should create the newsletter in HTML mode. Use the Notepad, for example, write the text, add image code and choose the html extension to save the file.

    HTML email with tracking pixel

    Open the saved document in the browser window, copy loaded content, and paste it in the email client message field. Test newsletter before bulk mailings.

    The alternative to Google Analytics for email marketing

    If you’re looking for a simple way to track your emails and see who opens them, have a glance at Atomic Email Tracker, a web-based service for tracking sent email messages. It works similar to the email tracking pixel in Google Analytics. Even more, Email Tracker gathers the extended statistics about email opens, click-throughs, pages visited, subscribers location, devices, etc.

    And what’s the main, no specific technical knowledge or additional efforts are required!


    Email marketing tracking can be easy and effective. Keep in mind your email marketing main goal, make a decision about the most important metrics, and choose the best way for monitoring and tracking bulk mail campaigns.

    Instead of conclusion: Answers your questions

    What can I track in Google Analytics?

    Tracking email campaigns in Google Analytics gives the next information:

    • amount of users that open the link
    • amount of unique users that follow the link
    • amount of session that users provoke
    • bounce rate
    • how many pages a user visits
    • the average duration of the session
    • conversion rate
    • transactions

    How to use Google Analytics for email campaigns

    For tracking email with Google Analytics you should do the following steps:

    1. Create your own account in GA.
    2. Generate the link with UTM.
    3. Insert this link to your email.
    4. Track users’ actions in the GA Account.

    How to track email open rates with Google Analytics?

    Log in your Google Analytics account, go to Reports > Real-Time > Events section. If the open tracking succeeds, there will be an entry under Event Category.

    Tracking email campaign in google analytics

    How do I check UTM in Google Analytics?

    Marking the link with UTM parameters helps to see the source from which the user visits the webpage. To check UTM in GA you should:

    • Generate the UTM link.
    • Go to Google Analytics account → Acquisition → All Traffic → Source/Medium.

    How would you track visitors from email newsletter campaigns?

    To track the number of users and their behavior we set the email goals for Google Analytics and create UTM marked links. After that, we see what actions users do on the website, how much time they spent here, and what pages visited them.

    In our list of software there are also mobile number extractor from website for collecting phone numbers, whois data extractor to find information about the owner of the email and an email email list verifier for checking the email address, to do it online use online bulk email verifier.

    Written by:
    Emily Bronte
    Back to blog
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