In this tutorial, we'll walk through how to track email performance using Google Analytics. We'll also learn how to set up Rejoiner’s built-in Google Analytics campaign tagging.
Once GA tagging is activated, Rejoiner will tag all clickable links in your email templates with Google Analytics UTM parameters. We will also inject the Google Analytics event tracking pixel for measuring email opens. The structure of the email tagging parameters is pre-defined:
Parameter | Value |
---|---|
utm_source |
rejoiner |
utm_medium |
|
utm_campaign |
Journey/Broadcast Name |
utm_content |
Creative Name |
The event tracking pixel follows similar tracking conventions related to campaigns and also employs two additional even tracking parameters:
Parameter | Value |
---|---|
event category |
|
even action |
open |
Google Analytics provides conversion tracking reporting in two different ways: Session-based and User-based. It’s important to understand the difference between these two filters:
If you’d like to measure the ability of your Rejoiner emails to generate conversions directly from email clicks, session-based filtering may be more relevant. But if you are interested in the people who interacted with a Rejoiner email and then convert in a session where Rejoiner email was at least one touchpoint, user-based filtering is the correct choice.
Why does Google Analytics show lower revenue totals than the Rejoiner dashboard?
Google Analytics uses last interaction attribution by default. This model attributes 100% of the conversion value to the last channel with which the customer interacted before buying or converting. This means that your GA reporting will only attribute revenue to your Rejoiner campaign where a user clicking an email was the last marketing interaction prior to conversion. This doesn't tell the complete story, as email marketing can influence purchase behavior in ways that last click doesn't capture.
This is where your Rejoiner dashboard comes in. Rejoiner attribution is engagement + time-based. This means that when a user opens or clicks on a Rejoiner email and converts within a set period of time (usually 30 days), we attribute that order to the campaign on your dashboard. This approach to attribution gives a complete picture of how your email campaigns are influencing purchase behavior.
If you’re using the free version of Google Analytics, your reporting may be using statistical sampling to generate reports. This means that Google is only using a percentage of your traffic to estimate what the data looks like across your entire traffic dataset. Depending on how much traffic your site is doing, you may be able to adjust the precision with which Google calculates your metrics.
Even at the highest available level of precision, Google Analytics could still be using only ~60% of your un-sampled data to generate reports. This is a common reason that there is variance between our reporting and GA.