Email Marketing and Google Analytics Integration
As Google Analytics is the de facto standard web site monitoring tool kit it is important that your email marketing campaigns are visible in Analytics when reviewing web site traffic and specifically when measuring the effectiveness of marketing expenditure across multiple digital channels.
Our GatorMail email marketing software utilises Google’s API set so that it integrates seamlessly with Google Analytics using a simple extension to the Google tracking codes on your website, GatorMail retrieves invaluable email marketing campaign data about which individual web pages were visited on your site once contacts had clicked off your email. This delivers truly invaluable insight into what people like and don’t like on your website, as well as 100% accurate conversion (and therefore ROI) reporting. | | 
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| | About Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool that is available to use at no cost. The nature of a free piece of software is such that most people, although having it switched on, don’t really utilise Google Analytics to its full potential.
As well as watching the big blue line showing daily traffic, you can utilise the advanced segments functionality to visualise in any time period what were the key contributors to site traffic, or whether one channel (say email marketing) was performing better than another (say PPC).
In addition, you can set up conversion goals in Google Analytics, then review by campaign type or even name to see whether or not the website traffic you are generating from your marketing campaigns is the type you want (the converting type). | So, How does it all work?
In GatorMail you can turn on Google Analytics email integration either globally (config), or at a campaign specific level (campaign details). Once activated all you now have to do is tell us which links you would like to track as you insert them.
Inserting a tracked link in GatorMail
So, now it’s all turned on and Google Analytics is tracking your email marketing campaigns, every time someone clicks on a link in your email which drives them to your website, Google Analytics is passed the following data through its API;
- utm_source = refering URL eg communigatormail.co.uk
- utm_medium = type i.e. email marketing
- utm_campaign = campaign name ie google analytics email marketing
- utm_term = subject line ie Hints and Tips on Email Marketing
- utm_content = content as required
Now that Google Analytics is aware of your marketing campaign name, your subject line and your type, you can use its advanced features to filter, report, split test and alert.
For those already using Google Analytics, you may notice that this functionality has been built to replicate that present in the Google link builder. | Conclusion
GatorMail will now refer your email marketing clicks into Google Analytics as if Google had generated them itself. This means all the functional areas available to you in Google Analytics are filtered for specific email campaigns, giving you true visibility of the outcome of your email marketing, and metrics of how it performs against other digital marketing channels. | |
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