Google Analytics Email User Traffic Tracking and Analysis

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Google Analytics allows you to track email user traffic, giving you valuable insights into how your email campaigns are performing.

By setting up email tracking in Google Analytics, you can see how many people are opening and clicking on your emails, as well as the demographics and interests of those users.

This information can help you refine your email marketing strategy and improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

What Is Tracking

Tracking is crucial in Google Analytics to understand how users interact with your website. You can set up Google Analytics email tracking to properly track email links.

Without proper tracking, your email traffic will show up in the Direct channel, making it difficult to analyze. This is because regular links don't have the special parameters needed for accurate tracking.

To track your email data, head to Acquisition » Traffic Acquisition in Google Analytics. From there, click on the Session default channel grouping dropdown.

Proper tracking allows you to see how long visitors spent on your site, which pages they visited, and whether they completed a conversion.

Tracking Basics

Credit: youtube.com, How to Track Referral Traffic in Google Analytics 4 [A Step-by-Step Guide 2025]

Google Analytics email tracking is setting up your email links so that Google can properly track them. This ensures that your email traffic is categorized and not lumped into the "Direct" channel.

You'll find your email data sorted by campaign by heading to Acquisition » Traffic Acquisition in Google Analytics. Click on the Session default channel grouping dropdown to view your email traffic.

To track links in your emails, you'll need to know about something called UTM code. UTM code is a few extra words added to the end of your URLs to tell Google Analytics that they're located in your emails.

The three main parameters of UTM code are:

  • utm_source - The source of the traffic, such as Constant Contact or your email marketing tool
  • utm_medium - For email traffic, this should be "email"
  • utm_campaign - A word or two about the email so you can see one email's performance against another

To create these links, you can use the UTM builder tool in ExactMetrics » Tools. This will give you the correct URL to copy and paste into your emails.

Finding Traffic

You can find email traffic in Google Analytics by looking at the Acquisition » Traffic acquisition section, where you'll see "Email" listed in your channels.

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To see how many conversions and total revenue were attributed to your email visitors, scroll to the right in the table.

You can also find out how your email visitors are interacting with the pages they visit on your site by navigating to Engagement » Pages and screens, then clicking the plus sign at the top of the table.

From the dropdown, choose Traffic source » Session-scoped » Session medium, and type "email" into the search bar to see what pages your email traffic visited, how long they spent on those pages, and more.

The most important thing is to have data-driven answers to questions like what is my email open rate, how many people are opening the emails, and are new leads taking the desired action in the email.

To start tracking your emails, you need to install Google Analytics, which is a free tracking software with tons of metrics and segmentation tools.

Once Google Analytics is installed, you can begin optimizing the software to suit your needs, and setting up URL tracking is a good idea whenever you are directing traffic from a source other than your homepage.

Trackable URLs will show which emails brought higher than average conversion rates when compared with each other, allowing you to see which emails are bringing in the most traffic and conversions.

Google Analytics 4

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Google Analytics 4 is a powerful tool for tracking email traffic, and one of the easiest ways to identify and analyze email or newsletter traffic is by going to the Traffic Acquisition report section and searching for Email.

You can look at the performance of your Email marketing traffic from there.

Selecting Source / Medium as the secondary dimension of your Google Analytics 4 report allows you to look at the email marketing performance of various email sources and mediums.

This is especially useful if you have multiple sources and mediums for your email marketing campaigns.

To create a filter in your Traffic Acquisition report, go to Traffic Acquisition and select Add filter.

Selecting Session primary channel group as the Dimension, exactly matches as Match Type, and Email as the Value will show you your Email traffic data.

Creating a filter is a great way to drill down into specific data and get a clearer picture of your email marketing performance.

A different take: Email Marketing Google

Credit: youtube.com, Analyze Email Traffic In Google Analytics 4

You can create an Explorations report to dig deep into your email marketing performance, such as a Path Exploration report to see how visitors from your email campaigns navigate through your website.

To do so, go to the Explorations and select Path Exploration, then select Segment and create a condition to only show email traffic.

A different take: Google Business Email Setup

Analytics and Marketing

Google Analytics can track email campaigns, but it needs some customization beforehand. You can segment traffic to your site by where visitors came from, such as Google search or social media.

To track email campaigns, you need to set up URL tracking, which helps you know how effective your email campaign is in generating conversions. This involves giving trackable URLs to each traffic source, like email campaigns or influencer marketers.

Trackable URLs break down differently for each traffic source, allowing you to see which emails are bringing in the most traffic and conversions. You can also use UTM parameters to add more depth to your reporting.

Credit: youtube.com, Email Reports in Google Analytics 4 - GA4 Email Tracking | GA4 Tutorials #3

To analyze your email marketing performance, you can use Google Analytics 4 reports, specifically the Traffic Acquisition report section. From there, you can search for Email and look at the performance of your Email marketing traffic.

You can also create a filter in your Traffic Acquisition report to see your Email traffic data. To do so, go to Traffic Acquisition and select Add filter, then select Session primary channel group as the Dimension and exactly matches as Match Type.

Campaign Tracking

Campaign tracking is a vital part of measuring the success of your email marketing campaigns. You can use Google Analytics to track email traffic and analyze the performance of your campaigns.

UTM code is used to track links in your emails and categorize clicks as email traffic. It's added to the end of your URLs to tell Google Analytics that they're located in your emails.

You can use three parameters with UTM code: utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. Utm_source identifies the source of the traffic, utm_medium is always "email", and utm_campaign is a word or two about the email.

Credit: youtube.com, Tracking Email Traffic In Google Analytics 4

To create a UTM code, you can use the ExactMetrics tool, which generates the correct URL to copy and paste into your emails.

Google Analytics 4 reports allow you to analyze email marketing performance by going to the Traffic Acquisition report section and searching for Email. You can also select Source / Medium as the secondary dimension to look at the email marketing performance of various email sources and mediums.

Campaign tags are additional information that you apply to links, and Google Analytics can read four parameters from a tagged link: Campaign name, source, medium, and content. Tagged links allow you to evaluate the performance of individual links within your emails.

To track email campaigns with Google Analytics, you need to ask yourself: What is my email open rate? Are new leads taking the desired action in the email? Having data-driven answers to these questions will help your marketing efforts thrive.

The most important UTM parameters for all email campaigns are utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign.

Here is a summary of the UTM parameters:

  • Utm_source: The source of the traffic (e.g., Constant Contact or email marketing tool)
  • Utm_medium: Always "email"
  • Utm_campaign: A word or two about the email (e.g., "spring-newsletter")

To set up UTM parameters, you can use the Campaign URL Builder tool, which makes it easy to start tracking your emails. Simply enter the website URL, campaign source, campaign medium, and campaign name, and the tool will generate a tagged link for you.

Credit: youtube.com, How to Track Email Campaign Traffic using UTM URL

Once you have set up your UTM parameters, you can view the results in Google Analytics by selecting Acquisition from the topics on the left navigation side-bar, scrolling down, and selecting Source/Medium. You will be able to see all of the different metrics for each newsletter that you send out.

Here's a step-by-step guide to setting up UTM parameters:

1. Go to the Campaign URL Builder tool

2. Enter the website URL

3. Enter the campaign source (e.g., "March Newsletter")

4. Enter the campaign medium (e.g., "email")

5. Enter the campaign name (e.g., "sale")

6. Click "Copy URL" to get the tagged link

On a similar theme: Ga4 Utm Parameters

Source and Medium

Source and Medium in Google Analytics 4 are connected, and channels group them together. You can find the source, medium, and source/medium dimensions in Google Analytics 4 in both the User Acquisition and Traffic Acquisition reports.

Sources are where your site visitors have come from, essentially where they were before they landed on your site. This could be a search engine, social media platform, AI engine, or a referring website. For example, sources can be google, bing, facebook.com, nytimes.com, or chatgpt.com.

Credit: youtube.com, How to use Source / Medium in GA4

Mediums indicate how the user arrived on your website. For example, this could be a referral (clicking on a link on the other website), organic (an organic listing in the SERP), or CPC (a cost per click paid ad). Common mediums include organic, cpc, referral, and email.

Here are some common examples of sources and mediums:

  • Source: google, bing, facebook.com, nytimes.com, chatgpt.com
  • Medium: organic, cpc, referral, email

By understanding the basics of source and medium, you can better comprehend how channels work in Google Analytics 4. Channels help you understand an overview of the type of visits a website is receiving.

Walter Brekke

Lead Writer

Walter Brekke is a seasoned writer with a passion for creating informative and engaging content. With a strong background in technology, Walter has established himself as a go-to expert in the field of cloud storage and collaboration. His articles have been widely read and respected, providing valuable insights and solutions to readers.

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