Mastering Email Marketing Tracking in Google Analytics 4
What is GA4 Email Tracking?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) email tracking is a methodology that allows marketers to monitor and analyze how users interact with your website after clicking links in your email campaigns. Unlike traditional email metrics that stop at the click, GA4 email tracking provides visibility into the entire user journey, from which email campaign drove the traffic to the pages they visited, actions they took, and whether they ultimately converted.
This tracking system works by appending special parameters called UTM parameters to the URLs in your email campaigns. When a user clicks these tagged links, GA4 captures and categorizes this information, allowing you to identify and analyze this traffic segment in your reports. The system enables you to distinguish email traffic from other sources and even separate different email campaigns, types, or individual emails from one another.
GA4 email tracking goes beyond simple traffic attribution. It allows you to connect email engagement to valuable on-site behaviors and conversions, revealing which email campaigns drive meaningful business results rather than just clicks.
This connection between email marketing actions and website performance data provides the insights needed to optimize your email strategy continuously.
How to Find Email Traffic in GA4 Reports?
Once you’ve implemented proper email tracking with UTM parameters, GA4 offers several ways to access and analyze your email marketing performance. The simplest approach is through the Traffic Acquisition report, which provides a high-level overview of your traffic sources.
To access this report, navigate to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition in your GA4 interface.
In the default view, you’ll see a breakdown of your traffic by session default channel group. Look for the “Email” channel in this list.
You can change the primary dimension by clicking the downward arrow and selecting Session source/medium. Then, click the blue + icon. After clicking the icon, search for Session campaign. Your report should now look like this.
The Importance of UTM Parameters
UTM parameters form the foundation of effective email tracking in GA4. These special URL parameters act as digital identification tags that tell Google Analytics exactly where your traffic is coming from. Without them, GA4 often misattributes email traffic as “direct” traffic or fails to distinguish between different email campaigns.
These parameters consist of simple text additions to your URLs that don’t affect how the page loads but provide crucial tracking information. For email marketing, there are three essential UTM parameters:
- utm_source: Identifies the specific sender or origin of the traffic
- utm_medium: Specifies the marketing channel (typically “email” for email campaigns)
- utm_campaign: Names your specific marketing initiative or campaign
Consistent use of UTM parameters also enables meaningful campaign comparisons over time. You can track performance trends, identify your most effective email types, and understand which content resonates best with your audience after they click through to your site.
Learn more about UTM parameters here:
UTM Examples for Email Campaigns
To illustrate how these parameters work in practice, let’s examine some real-world examples of properly tagged URLs for different types of email campaigns, focusing on the three core parameters: source, medium, and campaign.
Example 1: Welcome Email Series
For a welcome email sent to new subscribers, your URL might look like:
This URL tells GA4 that the traffic came from your welcome email series, specifically the first day’s introduction email.
This URL tells GA4 that the traffic came from your welcome email series, specifically the first day’s introduction email.
| Parameter | Value | Purpose |
utm_source | welcome_series | Identifies this as traffic from your welcome email sequence |
| utm_medium | Categorizes this traffic as coming from email marketing | |
| utm_campaign | day1_introduction | Specifies this is from the first email in the welcome series |
Example 2: Monthly Newsletter
For a monthly newsletter, you might use:
| Parameter | Value | Purpose |
| utm_source | monthly_newsletter | Identifies this as traffic from your regular newsletter |
| utm_medium | Categorizes this traffic as coming from email marketing | |
| utm_campaign | july_2025 | Specifies which month’s edition drove this traffic |
Validating Your Tracking Implementation
After setting up your UTM parameters, it’s important to validate that everything is working correctly before launching a full-scale campaign.
To test your email tracking setup, start by sending a test email to yourself that includes links with your newly created UTM parameters. Once you receive the email, open it and click on one of the tagged links. This will take you to your website with the UTM parameters included in the URL.
Go to Admin → DebugView in your GA4 interface.
In DebugView, verify that the utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign values appear correctly in the event parameters.
Remember that while real-time validation confirms your parameters are being captured correctly, it may take 24-48 hours for this data to be processed and appear in your standard GA4 reports. Plan your testing accordingly, especially before major campaign launches, to ensure you have time to address any issues that arise.
Building Your Email Campaign Analysis from Scratch
Let’s dive into creating a comprehensive exploration that will give you real insights into your email campaign performance, starting with a Free Form exploration which offers the most flexibility for the kind of deep-dive analysis that email campaigns require. The Free Form approach lets you build exactly what you need without being constrained by pre-built templates that might not align with your specific business questions.
Navigate to Explore and choose ‘Blank Report’
This will open up your workspace divided into three distinct areas: the Variables panel on the left where you’ll select your dimensions and metrics, the Settings section where you’ll configure your basic parameters, and the canvas area where your actual analysis will take shape.
For email campaign analysis, focus on traffic source dimensions that tell the story of how users found you, combined with behavioral dimensions that reveal what they did once they arrived.
Your traffic source dimensions should include First user source, First user medium, and First user campaign, which collectively tell you where users originally came from when they first discovered your website.
These are important for understanding your email’s role in customer acquisition and whether your campaigns are successfully bringing in genuinely new audiences or primarily re-engaging people who already knew about your brand.
Equally important are the session-level dimensions including Session source, Session medium, and Session campaign, which focus on the current visit rather than the historical first visit. This distinction is absolutely important for email analysis because it helps you understand both acquisition and re-engagement performance within the same analysis framework.
Now comes the part where everything comes together into a coherent analysis that actually provides actionable insights. Start by dragging Session source/medium into the Rows section of your canvas, which will serve as your primary breakdown and immediately show you how email performs relative to your other marketing channels.
Then add Session campaign as a second row dimension, which will give you the granular, campaign-level detail you need to identify your top-performing email campaigns and optimize your future sends accordingly.
For your metrics, start with Total Users, Sessions, Engaged Sessions, Engagement Rate, and Key events in the Values section, as these five metrics together tell a complete story about both the volume and quality of traffic your emails are generating.
Once you have this basic framework in place, you can apply a filter to focus specifically on email traffic by adding a filter where Session source/medium contains “email,” which will clean up your analysis and eliminate distractions from other traffic sources.
E-commerce Email Segment Performance
Start by navigating to the Segments section in your Variables panel and clicking the “+” button to create a new segment, which you’ll want to name something descriptive like “Email Acquired Users” for easy identification in future analyses.
Within the segment builder, add a condition where “First user medium” exactly matches “email” – this is crucial because it captures everyone who originally found your website through an email campaign, regardless of how they might return in subsequent sessions.
This segment becomes the foundation for understanding the long-term value of your email acquisition efforts, as it will track these users across all their future interactions with your site, providing insights into whether email-acquired customers behave differently from those who discovered you through other channels like organic search, social media, or paid advertising
Once your email acquisition segment is properly configured and applied to your exploration, the next step involves importing the e-commerce dimensions and metrics that will reveal the complete purchasing behavior of these email-acquired users.
Navigate to the Dimensions section and add “Item name” as your primary product dimension, which will allow you to see exactly which products resonate most with users who first came through email campaigns.
Then move to the Metrics section and add the key e-commerce metrics that tell the complete conversion story, starting with “Items viewed” to understand browsing behavior,
followed by “Items added to cart” to measure purchase intent, “Items purchased” to track actual conversions, and finally “Item revenue” to quantify the monetary value generated by each product.
When you drag “Item name” into the Rows section of your exploration and populate the Values section with these e-commerce metrics, you’ll create a report that shows not just which products email-acquired users are viewing and buying, but also the revenue contribution of each item specifically from users who first discovered your brand through email marketing efforts.
This level of granular analysis enables you to identify which products work best for email acquisition campaigns, optimize your email content to feature high-converting items, and calculate the true customer lifetime value of your email marketing investment by tracking the complete purchasing journey from first click to final purchase.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is GA4 Email Tracking?
GA4 email tracking monitors how users behave on your website after clicking links in your email campaigns. It shows page views, actions, and conversions, not just email opens and clicks.
2. Why are UTM parameters essential for email tracking?
UTM parameters identify the source, medium, and campaign of your email traffic. Without them, GA4 may misattribute email visits as “direct,” making your campaign performance unclear.
3. How can I find email traffic in GA4?
Go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition and look for the “Email” channel. For deeper insights, switch the primary dimension to Session source/medium and add Session campaign.
4. How do I create UTM-tagged URLs for my email campaigns?
Use Google’s Campaign URL Builder. Enter your website URL, set utm_medium=email, define your source, and name your campaign. The tool will generate a properly tagged link.
5. How do I verify that my email tracking is working in GA4?
Send yourself a test email, click the tagged link, then check Admin → DebugView in GA4. If your UTM values appear in the event parameters, tracking is working.
6. Can GA4 show e-commerce performance from email traffic?
Yes. By creating segments like First user medium = email, you can analyze product views, add-to-carts, purchases, and revenue generated specifically from email-acquired users.
