July 29th, 2019 | Updated on October 4th, 2019
Email marketing is a key tool to generate more business. It is an efficient, cost-effective way of building a relationship with the target customers, helping create brand awareness, and leading to increased sales.
Why Track Email Campaigns?
Through email marketing, you can get maximum people to respond to your ad. When you track the emails, you get to know these things:
- Are you meeting the rates you have set?
- Is your campaign getting the leads?
- Are these leads converting into customers?
There are many kinds of information you would be interested in knowing: number of links that got clicked, users who left. However, the main thing everybody wants to know is how many leads converted into actual customers.
Google Analytics is a tool that lets you go through the entire path that your customer takes once he lands on your website.
With the help of GA, you get a clear idea of what kind of emails garner maximum clicks and how the customer behaves while he is there.
Benefits Of Measuring Email Marketing Through Google Analytics
Some of the crucial benefits of measuring email marketing through Google Analytics are:
- Finding out the leads and sales.
- Getting to discover which links were successful to meet their objectives, which web pages got more visibility.
- Comparing results of Email marketing with other marketing efforts.
- Setting goals, running A/B tests and tagging links automatically and then tracking the success of the existing campaign.
However, when you decide to use GA for email marketing, you must first consider what the goal of your email campaign is. Are you trying to generate leads, increase your subscribers, or want leads to convert into customers? You must have clear answers to these questions.
How To Set Up Google Analytics To Track Email Campaigns
It is easy for anyone to use Google Analytics to track email campaigns. Read on to know the basic steps.
Step 1. Set Up The Goals
Running GA for the sake of running won’t do your campaign any good. What you need to see if the tracked information meets your goals or not. So, as soon as you sign up, don’t hesitate to set up the goals.
You have three options to set up the goals:
- A goal template;
- A smart goal;
- A custom goal.
Step 2. Add URLs
You have posted a new content on your blog, and to attract viewers to this content you have also re-shared it on Email and Facebook. This has resulted in new viewers, but you are not sure which strategy have got you more visitors: Email or Facebook. What to do?
Add traceable URLs or links with UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) at the end of the website URL. Share these URLs manually or automatically.
Follow These Steps To Do The Needful:
A. Add a link to the website where you are trying to attract new visitors.
B. Specify the source of the campaign: This is important as you need to tell from where you are getting hits:
- Name of a Search Engine, E.g., Google;
- Concerned Website, E.g., Facebook.com;
- The Specific Name of the Email, E.g., Black_friday_newsletter;
- Direct Traffic, E.g. Those Users Who Bookmarked Your Website or Typed the Url in Their Browser.
C. Enter the campaign medium: Here, you need to write the type of traffic from where visitors are coming:
- Organic — Unpaid search;
- CPC (cost per click) — Paid search;
- Referral traffic;
- Email — Traffic from the source that you have created;
- None — Direct or unknown traffic.
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Step 3: Add The Name Of Your Campaign
Send Pulse can allow you to add UTM parameters at the last stage of your email campaign. Just tick the correct box and leave on SendPulse to create a campaign, source and medium tags, etc.
Step 4: Create An Advanced Segment
Advanced segments are the filters which allow you to see any data from a specific category of visitors. Click on Add segment box and create a segment, once done just click save. Use the same Add segment box and find new segments and apply the same to your reports.
Step 5: Review Your Reports
Once the campaign tracking has been enabled and the above steps accomplished, you can see any report in GA and analyse what effect your campaign has on the numbers.
Types Of Reports:
Real-Time Report
A report that shows the click-through your recently sent email campaign received. You get to see how many people are on your website and which campaigns led them here. Click real-time from the left menu, then choose ’traffic sources’ and ‘email’ to get this started.
Overview Report
This report gives an overview of the traffic coming from emails in comparison to the total website traffic. It tells how many total visitors (also called sessions) and unique visitors (called users) were from email campaigns. The number of pages per visit and bounce rate can also be seen. To access it, enable ‘Campaign Medium: Email,’ turn on the advanced segment, from the left menu select ‘Audience,’ and finally, select ‘Overview.’
The report gives an indication of how much traffic is coming from emails vis a vis the total website traffic. You can also find how many total visitors and unique visitors were received from the email campaign. To go to the same, first enable ‘Campaign Medium: Email,’ click on the advanced segment, then choose ‘Audience,’ and finally, select ‘Overview.’
Campaign Report
Compare the results of all the email campaigns in one stretch. To access the first click on the ‘Campaign Medium: Email’, click on ‘Acquisition’ and later click ‘Campaigns.’
Behaviour Flow Report
Do you want to know what people usually do when they are on your website and which pages get the maximum traffic? Using this report you get an idea of the same. In the left menu, you must select ‘Behaviour’, and then ‘Campaigns’ to know more.
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Some Important Metrics
Some important metrics that should form part of all reports, irrespective of your goals, are given below.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This would be the percentage of people who have clicked on any one of the links present in your email. You can calculate email performance and its CTR over time.
Conversion Rate
Each email sent needs a CTA which could be anything from these following:
- Make a sale
- Read an article on your blog
- Fill out a subscription form
- Request a quote
- Sign up for an event or webinar
The email conversion rate, in other words, would find out the effectiveness of your email with regards to its goal. Calculating email conversion rate is rather easy. Divide the number of purchases or sign-ups you have received with the number of email deliveries sent successfully. Now multiply this figure by 100 and you get your answer.
Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of emails which were not received by the recipients for whatever reason. The errors that arise can be of two types:
- Hard bounce (permanent) – Non -existent email addresses
- Soft bounce (temporary) – Inbox is full, a person is out of the office or any server problem. Once the matter is resolved your email would be delivered.
There are multiple reasons why you should check your bounce rate. A high bounce rate may be caused by one these factors:
- Issues with one specific email provider
- Wrong upload of the email addresses
- Dummy email because of the wrong method of collection
List Growth Rate
The rate at which the email list is growing. A positive growth rate means your reach is on expansion.
Forwarding And Sharing Emails
This would be the percentage of people who shared that email either on their social platform or through forwarding to a friend option.
Opt-Out/Unsubscribe Rate
People may even opt-out of your email list. However, you must know why this is happening. Though you want the number of people leaving to be less than those joining, here are some aspects of email testing you should include:
- Subject lines
- Send name
- Send time
- Email content formatting
- CTAs within emails
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So What Can I Learn From My Email Analytics?
What Did Your Subscribers Like In Your Email?
Go through your click-through rates and clicks to find out the kind of content people have liked. You can use this information to create content that engages. If there is any topic that gets more attention, create more related content around that topic.
When’s The Best Time To Email?
Notice the sending time that has given you more engagement. Once you get an idea, follow it religiously so that the customers have the fair idea when they are going to receive an email from you.
On What Device Are People Reading Your Email?
Find if customers are reading your emails on the desktop or on their smartphones. You can then decide on having a responsive email template.
