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Google Analytics for Email Marketing

by system
Mon, Oct 29th 2012 09:00 am

In last month's newsletter, our feature article discussed ways that you could enhance your email marketing strategy, such as improving the quality of your headlines and A/B testing your delivery times. Today, we take it a step further with a tutorial from Social Media Today, that will show you how to track website traffic from an email campaign (or Facebook, Twitter, and just about anything else) using Google Analytics.

While many email systems, such as Fission Blast, have built in GA campaign builders, not all systems are created equal. Therefore, it is important to know how to set up analytics that allow you to see how many people clicked on your link, how long they stayed on your site, and what pages they viewed while they were there.

Before getting started with campaign tracking, you'll need to add Google Analytics to your website. Once the tracking method is in place, creating campaigns is a snap!

To get started, head on over to the Google Analytics URL Builder and complete the form. This will generate a link that you can use in your emails to direct traffic to your site.


If you want or need to shorten your link, use a free service like www.bit.ly. You can also create a custom URL by hovering your mouse over the shortened link and clicking on "customize" and saving your newly titled link.

Lastly, you'll want to isolate the traffic from this campaign on Google Analytics using the Advanced Segments feature.


Simply click on "New Custom Segment," enter the name of the campaign from Step 1, and save. Doing this will allow you to see only the traffic from the campaign you want to track.


Now you're ready to track traffic from your newsletter (or anywhere else you use this link) to your website!