Email marketing is a crucial aspect of any modern marketing strategy, but simply sending out emails is not enough. Measuring the performance of your email campaigns is essential to understanding how your subscribers engage with your content, which ultimately allows you to make data-driven decisions and improve your marketing efforts.
UTM tracking is a powerful tool that allows you to track the performance of your email campaigns and gain valuable insights into how your subscribers interact with your content. UTM tracking involves adding unique tags to the links in your email campaigns, which enables you to monitor the traffic generated from each campaign in your analytics platform.
In this blog post, we will provide a comprehensive guide to UTM tracking for email marketing. We will explain what UTM tracking is, how it works, and why it’s important for your email campaigns. We will also provide a step-by-step guide on how to set up UTM tracking in your emails and show you how to use the data generated from UTM tracking to optimize your email marketing strategy. By the end of this post, you will have a clear understanding of UTM tracking and be able to use it effectively to improve your email campaigns.
Use Google Analytics:
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track and analyze the performance of your website and other digital marketing channels. To track email traffic using UTM tracking in Google Analytics, you will need to add UTM parameters to your email links. You can then view the traffic generated from each email campaign in the “Campaigns” section of Google Analytics.
Use a dedicated email marketing platform:
Many email marketing platforms, such as Mailchimp and Constant Contact, have built-in UTM tracking features. By adding UTM parameters to your email links on these platforms, you can track the performance of your email campaigns and see metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
Use URL shorteners:
URL shorteners, such as Bitly and TinyURL, are another way to track email traffic using UTM tracking. By shortening your email links and adding UTM parameters, you can track the performance of your email campaigns and see metrics such as click-through rates and conversion rates.
Use a UTM Tracking Tool:
There are many UTM tracking tools available, such as UTM.io and CampaignTrackly, that can help you create and manage UTM parameters for your email campaigns. These tools often include features such as campaign tagging and URL shortening, making it easier to track the performance of your email campaigns.
Use custom reports:
Custom reports in Google Analytics can help you analyze the performance of your email campaigns in more detail. By creating custom reports that focus specifically on email traffic and UTM parameters, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your email campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve your marketing strategy.
As a whole, tracking email traffic using UTM tracking is a powerful way to measure the performance of your email campaigns and gain valuable insights into how your subscribers engage with your content. By using tools such as Google Analytics, dedicated email marketing platforms, URL shorteners, UTM tracking tools, and custom reports, you can track the effectiveness of your email campaigns and make data-driven decisions to improve your marketing strategy.
With these resources at your disposal, you can make sure that your email campaigns are successful and produce the best outcomes for your company.
How to configure UTM tracking in emails
Adding UTM tracking to your emails only requires a few easy steps. This is how you do it:
Decide on a UTM parameter:
The selection of a UTM parameter to track is the first step. UTM parameters are brief text strings that you add to the end of your URL to track particular campaign data. These are the most typical UTM parameters:
utm_source: identifies the traffic source for your website (such as paid search, social media, and email).
utm_medium: identifies the medium used to reach your audience (e.g. email newsletter, social media post, banner ad).
utm_campaign: identifies the campaign you’re running (e.g. summer sale, back-to-school promotion).
Create a UTM tag:
Next, you’ll need to create a UTM tag for each link in your email that you want to track. This involves adding the UTM parameters to the end of your URL, separated by an ampersand (&) and preceded by a question mark (?).
Use a UTM builder:
To make it easier to create UTM tags, you can use a UTM builder tool. There are many free tools available online, such as the Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder. Simply enter the relevant information for each UTM parameter, and the tool will generate a UTM tag for you.
Add UTM tags to your email links:
Once you’ve created your UTM tags, you’ll need to add them to the links in your email. This can be done using your email marketing platform’s link editor or by manually editing the HTML code of your email.
Track your email campaigns:
Finally, you can track your email campaigns using a web analytics tool like Google Analytics. In Google Analytics, you can view your email campaign data by going to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns. Here, you’ll see a list of your campaigns and the associated UTM parameters. You can then analyze your campaign data to see which campaigns are performing best and make data-driven decisions to improve your email marketing strategy.
In conclusion, setting up UTM tracking in your emails is a simple yet powerful way to track the effectiveness of your email campaigns and gain insights into how your subscribers engage with your content. By using UTM parameters and a UTM builder tool, you can easily create UTM tags for your email links and track your campaigns using web analytics tools like Google Analytics. With these insights, you can improve your email marketing strategy and generate better results for your business.
