Tracking Email Campaigns with Google Analytics?

"Can you use Google Analytics to track email campaigns?"

Today I stumbled upon this question on the Web Analytics Forum. Someone from a Fortune 500 company wanted to know if there is a way that Google Analytics can help in getting information on their email campaigns.

Apparently it's possible as some people point out:

"If you use the URL Builder you could tag your links within the email, going out to your website as being from the medium of email, and the campaign could be the date and you could continue to segment if desired."

"You should just add a few parameters to your outbound links from the newsletter. Tag your links in the following fashion: http://www.yoursite.com/yourpage.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=name_of_your_email_blast. Then, you can see in your Traffic Source Report the visits coming from links from your email blast and use it as a way to segment your traffic and compare various metrics such as goal conversion (if you have one setup), bounce rate, etc…"

Does anyone have experience with this? What are the pros and the cons? Share your thoughts and comments on the Email Marketer's Club forum!

Comments

[Gavin Doolan]

I'm also looking for a solution like this. While tracking links in the email is useful. Its not an actual open rate.

Open rates are not reliable because images are often disabled by default especially in outlook.

You can only track if a user enables images, which I guess is the best indication they have opened and are interested in your email.

I think with urchin you can use a dead pixel, but not with Analytics.

Will keep looking though :(.

[Gavin Doolan]

I'm also looking for a solution like this. While tracking links in the email is useful. Its not an actual open rate.

Open rates are not reliable because images are often disabled by default especially in outlook.

You can only track if a user enables images, which I guess is the best indication they have opened and are interested in your email.

I think with urchin you can use a dead pixel, but not with Analytics.

Will keep looking though :(.

[Jeroen Sentel]

The solution described only measures the clickrate. I think a lot of people are interested in the openrate of email campaigns. The openrate is always an issue even with dead pixels etc.

I'm looking for a reliable way to measure the openrate of our newsletters. Dead pixels, javascript (analytics) etc. crossed my mind, but you can't depend on those methods being accurate when opened by an email client like outlook.

If anyone has some advise or could point me in the right direction I'd be very thankfull