Tracking Email Opens with Google Analytics

Email marketing gets a bad rap. In the minds of some, it's like the 8-track or the fax machine of marketing. Why use dusty, old school methods when we've got all the shiny, new social medias? According to Copyblogger, "[email marketing has a] ROI of around 4,300% (according to the Direct Marketing Association), email practically pays for itself … and saves a tree or two. It’s what you use when you want to move from “conversation to commerce.” So don't give up on the 8-track...err...email campaign just yet. Now, how do you track it's effectiveness? Maybe you use a email marketing service that will give you a bit of data, like if the email was opened. But how do you know if it's been read, and if it actually ended up in a conversion? It'd be nice to track that entire process end to end in one place, right? It's your lucky day. Check out Google's Developer's site for how to use the measurement protocol for email so you can track email opens and clicks on links inside emails.

Why is This Exciting?

Because we haven't been able to track email opens in GA before, just the visits coming from email to your site, once someone clicks to open.  With email opens, you can extend the range of GA's insights to include the inbox. Imagine this: you buy an AdWords ad and bring a user to your site.  They browse around, signup for your email newsletter, but don't do much else.  Then, you start emailing them, but you don't know if they actually ever open that email.  Getting an email subscriber is nice, and tying that signup back to AdWords is nice, but what's better?  People actually reading your emails... with the right email open tracking implementation with GA, now you can do just that. With an event hit for the email open, you'll be able to set things like a Goal inside GA for "email opens" and then begin to tie data from activities on your site and from your marketing acquisition channels through to what goes on inside the inbox.  Now that's starting to get interesting!