Google Analytics is an analytics service provided by Google that tracks and reports website and email traffic and user behavior. It provides insights into how users interact with a website or email, what pages they visit, how long they stay, and how they arrived at the website.
Google Analytics can track a variety of metrics, including the number of visitors, the bounce rate, the average session duration, and the conversion rate. It can also track where visitors are located, what devices they use, and which channels drive the most traffic.
How Google Analytics Is Used for Email Marketing
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can be used to gather more information about your subscribers. Here’s some information about the kind of data you can gather, as well as how you can use Google Analytics to optimize your email marketing campaigns:
- Traffic Analyzation: You can analyze the traffic generated by your email campaigns in Google Analytics. You can see how many visits, page views, and conversions were generated by your email campaigns. You can also track the bounce rate, time on site, and other engagement metrics to assess the effectiveness of your campaigns.
- Segmenting data: You can use Google Analytics to segment your email traffic by different criteria, such as source, medium, campaign, or audience. This can help you identify which segments are performing best and which need improvement.
- Assessing conversion rates: Google Analytics can help you track the conversion rate of your email campaigns, which can provide insights into how effective your campaigns are at driving sales or other conversions.
- Optimizing campaigns: By analyzing the data generated by your email campaigns in Google Analytics, you can identify areas for improvement and optimize your campaigns accordingly. This could involve adjusting the messaging, targeting different audiences, or experimenting with different formats or layouts.
- Goal tracking: Google Analytics allows you to set up goals that track specific actions taken by email recipients, such as filling out a form, making a purchase, or downloading a resource. This can help you measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns at driving conversions.
- Multi-channel funnel tracking: Google Analytics allows you to track the paths that users take before converting, including interactions with email campaigns. This can help you understand how email marketing fits into the broader customer journey.
- E-commerce tracking: If you run an online store, Google Analytics allows you to track e-commerce transactions generated by email campaigns, including revenue, conversion rate, and average order value.
How to Use Google Analytics for Email Marketing Campaigns
Here’s how you can setup Google Analytics for your email marketing campaigns and gather more data on your subscribers:
Set up Google Analytics for your website
If you haven’t already done so, you need to set up a Google Analytics account and add the tracking code to your website. You can find the tracking code on the “Admin” section and then click “Tracking Code.”
Create a new campaign in Google Analytics
To track your email marketing campaigns separately from other sources, you need to create a new campaign in Google Analytics. To do this, go to the “Admin” section of your Google Analytics account and select “Campaigns” under the “Property” column. Then click on “New Campaign” and follow the instructions to set up your campaign.
Create UTM parameters for your email campaign links
UTM parameters are tags that you add to the end of your email campaign links to track the traffic from your email campaigns separately from other sources. To create UTM parameters, you need to use the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder.
Add UTM parameters to your email campaign links
Once you have created your UTM parameters, you need to add them to the links in your email campaigns. You can use different UTM parameters, depending on what you want to track. Here are examples:
- Use “utm_campaign” to identify which campaign you want to track
- Use “utm_source” to track the platform sending the traffic
- Use “utm_medium” to track the channels your subscribers are using
- Use “utm_content” to track which link placement prompts your subscribers to act
To make it work, all you need to do is add an equal sign (=) to the end of the UTM tag and type the parameters you set. For example, if your campaign name is “summer 2023 sale,” then the UTM tag should say “utm_campaign=summer2023sale”.
If you want to track multiple things at once, add an ampersand (&) after each tag. The full tag at the end of the link would look like this:
“utm_source=source&utm_medium=medium&utm_campaign=campaign”
Track your email campaign traffic in Google Analytics
After you’ve added UTM parameters to your email campaign links, you can track the traffic from your email campaigns in Google Analytics. To do this, go to the “Acquisition” section of your Google Analytics account and select “Campaigns” under “All Traffic.” Here you can view the traffic and other metrics for your email campaigns.
Why Google Analytics?
Google Analytics isn’t the only analytics service or tool used in digital marketing, so why use it over others? Well, Google Analytics offers many advantages over other tools, such as:
It’s free
Google Analytics is free to use. This is a significant advantage over other tools, which may charge a fee for similar features. There is a premium version, called Google Analytics 360, which offers more advanced features, but the standard version is suitable for most small to medium-sized businesses. Meanwhile, the premium version is designed for larger enterprises with more complex tracking needs.
Integration with other Google products
Google Analytics integrates well with other Google products, such as Google Ads, Google Tag Manager, and Google Data Studio. This makes it easy to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns across different platforms and create reports using Google Data Studio.
User-friendly interface
Google Analytics has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for users to navigate and find the information they need. The dashboard is customizable, allowing users to view only the data that is relevant to their needs.
Customizable reports
Google Analytics allows users to create custom reports based on the metrics that are most important to their business. Users can choose from a wide range of metrics and create reports that can be easily exported and shared.
Advanced features
Google Analytics has advanced features such as event tracking, goal tracking, and e-commerce tracking, which allow businesses to track user behavior on their website in detail. These features can provide valuable insights into user behavior and help businesses optimize their website for better results.
