Are you sick of hearing about Apple’s iOS 15 update that rolled out recently? Us too. But unfortunately, something tells us we’ll all be discussing it for quite some time. 

This update changed email marketing. If you didn’t do much to prepare for this rollout, then you may be dealing with some unfortunate repercussions with your email marketing strategy right now. 

The rollout essentially made it so that Apple Mail users can now opt-out of certain email tracking. This means you may be experiencing things like:

  • Inaccurate tracking of email open rates
  • Limited access to IP addresses 
  • Lack of email segmentation capabilities around subscriber location 
  • Difficulty accessing real email addresses 

Needless to say, you should be making some changes to the way you track success from your email marketing. Luckily, there are different email KPIs to focus on, as well as other approaches for you to look into when deciding which campaigns are effective and which fall flat. 

And, at Benchmark Email, we made it even easier to link your email campaigns to real, measurable metrics. Let’s discuss how you can use Google Analytics to track the success of your Benchmark Email campaigns. Ready?

The Perks of Using Google Analytics

Let’s face it; not everyone has a big marketing budget. Accessing tools that offer backend website analytics can be an expensive and lengthy process. Each tool comes with its competitive advantages, and next thing you know, you’re signing up for something that has tons of features you don’t even need. 

There are so many perks to using Google Analytics, and one of the big ones is that with a Google account, it’s totally free. Yes, as in, you pay nothing. 

There’s no need to accumulate tons of spreadsheets because Google Analytics tracks all your website data for you. And, if you need to make adjustments, you can customize your reports so you can see exactly what you need in order to track success. 

Google Analytics helps you uncover insights into website traffic and certain website behavior your users and visitors are making. You can see how your social media is driving traffic and conversions, which blog posts are getting the most views, and which pages experience the most engagement. It pulls back the curtain so you can uncover the gaps, what needs to be optimized, and areas that are successful. It’s an essential tool for marketing and sales teams and for accessing the performance of your email marketing campaigns

Get a Better Idea of Your Email Marketing Return with Google Analytics

If you are not a Benchmark Email user, you can do this manually by adding UTM parameters to every link in your email campaign. For Benchmark Email accounts, all you need to do is connect your Google Analytics account, and we’ll automatically track your email campaigns in Google Analytics for you. 

(p.s. don’t have an account? sign up for free, here.)

What Can You Track?

With the Google Analytics feature turned on (or UTM tracking in place), users can tie their email campaigns to their conversion goals in Google Analytics. This provides them with a better indication of success than simpler indicators like email opens and clicks. 

Once your campaign has been sent, head over to your Google Analytics account and navigate to Acquisition > Campaigns.

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This view will give you access to:

Acquisition Metrics

How much traffic are your email campaigns driving to your website?

Sessions

Track how many visits have been generated from your selected email campaign. This data is useful in seeing how much traffic your email campaign is sending to your website. These visits will include sessions from not only the direct recipients of your email campaign, but from visitors who may have been forwarded the email campaign or sent a link to your email campaign as well.

Users and New Users

Users correlate to the number of visitors your campaign sent to your website. Since a user may visit your site multiple times, this number is a bit lower than the number of sessions. You can also tie the number of first time website visitors to your campaign. It’s a useful gauge to see if your email campaign is resonating with an audience you may not have connected with before.

Behavior Metrics

What are users doing when they reach your website?

Bounce Rate

If visitors from your campaign are landing on your website, but bouncing right away, it could be an indication that the offer in your email doesn’t match your website, or that your landing page could use some optimization.

Average Page Views and Session Duration

Are your visitors sticking around, and digging a little deeper into your website? These metrics can tell you. There are several factors to test if you have a low average page views or low session duration. Is the list you’re sending your email campaign to engaged? Is the copy and content on your website optimized? Are you using deep linking to drive visitors to the next stage of the customer journey?

Conversion Metrics

Conversions are the most powerful metric to tell you if your email campaigns are performing. After all, email marketing is all about generating new and repeat customers for your business. Make sure you have conversion goals set up in your Google Analytics account. Your conversion goals will depend on your business model and how your website generates revenue. You may want to track requests for a conversation, the downloads of a specific resource, free account sign-ups as well as purchases.

With conversion goals set in GA, you can select your goal and see how many conversions your email campaign is generating, what the conversion rate is, and – if you have it set up – the value of your conversions from your email campaign. It’s a hard and fast way to measure the REAL ROI of your email marketing efforts.

A Better Idea of How Successful Your Emails Are

Sure, knowing how many of your emails are opened is nice. But that only takes you so far. And since that metric is being compromised, continuing to rely on it just doesn’t make any sense. 

By tapping into Google Analytics’  tool and features, you’ll gain a 360 view of just how well your emails are performing. This also allows you to get more granular with your goal setting, as you can track specifics like conversions and revenue to really connect the dots between your email marketing and ROI

If you’re curious about how our email marketing software connects to your Google Analytics account and want to learn more on how to do it, click this link for more details

And, if you aren’t currently a Benchmark Email user but are interested in signing up, join our free plan today and see what we’re all about.

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by Benchmark Team