Learn to add tracking to links in your email campaigns.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
- This link tracking can't be added to links using advanced personalisation.
To learn more, check out the article Advanced personalisation - an overview.
Overview
You can automatically add tracking code to your campaigns' link URLs. For example, if you want to track where your traffic comes from, and your website has that capability, then you can automatically have our system add a query string to links such as ?Ref=email.
Link tracking can be a custom tracking code (as above), or it can be a Google Analytics tracking code, or you can edit and customise Google Analytics tracking values.
Tracking code allows you to gather valuable information on how your links are being used and how effective they are. Any Google Analytics data can also be pulled through into the application's reporting area.
All in all, adding tracking code to your links provides you with better site analytics.
Adding generic link tracking code
To access Site analytics, select Email campaigns > Advanced features and then select the Site analytics tab.
To add a single generic query string to your outbound links (using analytics other than Google), click Add new under link tracking. The 'Link tracking' window will open, enabling you to enter the link tracking field and the value you require.
For example, setting the field as 'Ref' and the value as 'email' will generate the following:
http://www.example.com/?Ref=email
Adding personalisation to tracking code values
Contact data fields
You have the ability to add contact data field personalisation to values, by clicking on the personalisation icon.
This means a contact-specific value can be added into the link tracking code.
For example, if you set the field as 'country' and select the contact data field 'COUNTRY' from the personalisation dropdown, you will generate the following:
http://www.example.com/?country=@COUNTRY@
Then, if for example 'England' is stored against the contact's 'COUNTRY' contact data field, England will be added to the tracking code in place of @COUNTRY@.
Ticking the Remove unsafe characters box will remove characters that are deemed unsafe so your tracking parameters are not removed by website security profiles.
System fields
In addition to your contact data fields, there are three system fields that you can choose from to populate a value into your tracking string. They are:
- $CAMPAIGN_NAME$
- The name if the campaign that the link is contained in.
- $COMPANY_NAME$
- Your company name, as recorded in Account > Billing details > Company details.
- $LINK_KEYWORD$
- The link name entered in the Add a link window in EasyEditor.
Once you have finished customising your tracking strings, select SAVE.
Any tracking query strings that you create appear under Link tracking.
From here you can delete and edit your link tracking query strings at any time.
You should note that UTM tags aren’t automatically applied to personalised links. For example, account-level UTM tags won't be added to http://@DOMAIN_URL@/homepage/footer. You are required to add the tags manually.
Please note
When adding, removing or updating link tracking query strings and their values, changes will only take effect for existing campaigns once the campaigns are modified and re-saved. New campaigns that are subsequently created will have these values automatically applied, however. You will also be reminded of this within the application after having made the change.
Adding Google Analytics tracking code
To enable Google-friendly links, click the Google Analytics Tracking button positioned to the right.
If you don't see this button, then this process has already been carried out and you should see the Google fields already listed under Site analytics.
A window will appear to confirm the field and values you're adding:
Clicking Continue will add these under 'Link tracking'. By doing this, you will have automatically added the following to your links:
- utm_campaign=Your campaign name - noting which campaign it was that referred the user to the site
- utm_medium=email - noting the medium by which someone arrived on the site
- utm_source=Your company name - noting the name of the company referring the visitor to the site; this is the company name as set under the 'Company details' section at the top of the 'Billing details' tab in your 'Accounts' area.
As with generic link tracking code, you can also delete and edit (see below) Google Analytics tracking code.
We recommend making sure that you add names to your links when creating your campaign. This will mean you should be able to find them in your Google Analytics dashboard reports by navigating to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns, selecting the campaign you're interested in, and then can adding a 'Secondary dimension' of 'Ad Content'. This will add an 'Ad Content' column that will show all the sessions that came in via those named links.
Again, remember to modify and re-save any existing campaigns for any changes to take effect.
Customising Google Analytics tracking values
If you don't want to use our default values for Google Analytics tracking, you have the ability to customise them by clicking on Edit alongside the value you want to change.
For instance, you might want to customise a couple of the values as follows:
- utm_medium=MyEmailMarketingProvider - the name of your email marketing provider/medium, so that will be us!
- utm_source=email marketing
Clicking on Edit will open the 'Link tracking' window, allowing you to enter your own value in the 'Value' field. Again, you can use the personalisation function for contact-specific values.
Click Save to confirm any changes made and, once again, remember to modify and re-save any existing campaigns for any changes to take effect.
Be aware when customising Google Analytics tracking values
If you opt to view your Google Analytics reporting within our reporting (see how to do this below), then customising Google Analytics tracking values can mean the associated data will not get pulled through. To get it to pull through, make sure:
- utm_source is a static value (but it can be anything you like)
- utm_campaign must remain $CAMPAIGN_NAME$
Viewing Google Analytics reporting within the application
When checking your email reports in the application, you'll also want to see your Google Analytics data in there too, rather than having to also have Google Analytics open alongside your reporting. For your convenience, we've ensured that you can do this.
Please note: viewing Google Analytics reporting in-app isn't available for triggered campaigns, only for standard campaigns.
To allow us to pull your Google Analytics data into reporting, you'll need to authorise the connection to Google Analytics.
To do this, go to Account > Account settings, scroll down to the 'Google Analytics' section at the foot of the page and click the Authorise connection link.
If you're logged into your Google account already, a box will pop up asking you to allow the connection request; if not, you'll need to enter your username and password before being asked to allow the connection request.
Go to Analytics > Channel analytics > Reports: Email and select your campaign. Then expand the More reports drop-down menu, and select Google Analytics.
When you first open it, we'll ask you which Google Analytics profile the campaign was for, and we'll remember this for next time. But you can always change it, and this is handy for campaigns that may affect more than one of your profiles.
It's worth waiting at least 48 hours before checking your statistics because, as well as waiting for users to receive your email, you may need to wait for Google Analytics to process any visiting activity.
Note: this feature isn't available on all accounts. If you'd like to upgrade to enable this feature, contact your dedicated account manager (if you know who it is), or fill out this request form, making sure that you specify 'Account Management' as the query type.