Connect your cold email system with Google Analytics

Step-by-step Playbooks
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Business Benefits

Track actions on your website as Goal Completions and identify user sources via UTM Code

Create a list of all Goals and UTM Parameters you want to track, and create new Events for all event goals.

You can either track event-based goals, such as Newsletter Subscribe button clicks or Destination goals, such as when users visit a particular URL.

Event goals need specific events before they can be set up. When setting an event-based goal, decide on what user action on your website you would like to track, such as a button click.

Examples of UTM parameters you may want to track include: utm_source=cold-email, utm_medium=email, and utm_campaign=broadcast.

Classify goals into categories for consolidating reports in Google Analytics.

An example of a category and goal combination can be Pageviews as the category and Product Page View, Services Page View, About Us Page View as the goal.

Similarly, another example could be Video Views as the category, and individual videos as unique goals.

Add UTM queries to the end of your URLs when placing links in cold emails or cold email templates based on the parameters you are tracking.

For example, instead of simply adding a link to “https://google.com,” you would link to “https://google.com/**`?utm_source=cold-email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=broadcast`**”

Create new event tracking tags in Google Tag Manager and set up the event configuration.

To create a new tag in Google Tag Manager:

  1. Click Tags in the left sidebar menu of your GTM dashboard.
  2. Click New and name your tag. For example: GA - Event - Subscribe Button.
  3. Click Tag Configuration, and select Google Analytics: Universal Analytics.

To set up event configurations for GTM Tags:

  1. Select Event as the Track Type.
  2. Enter the category name (e.g. Buy button or Ecommerce) from the list of categories you created above under Category.
  3. Enter the name of the action you want to track (e.g. Click or Pageview) under Action.
  4. Enter a label name under Label (optional).
  5. Enter your Google Analytics ID under Google Analytics Settings, or select the Analytics Variable if you already created one.

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Create and configure custom event triggers in GTM, and copy your Built-in Variable Value from your website page.

To create a trigger for an Event Tag:

  1. Click on Triggering.
  2. Click on “+” sign on your top-right corner.
  3. Name your trigger (e.g. Subscribe Button).

To get the Built-in Variable Value from the website page:

  1. Open the URL for the page where you wish to track the user actions in a new tab.
  2. Right-click on button that you want to track clicks for, and click Inspect Element (if you are using Google Chrome, or Safari or Inspect if using Microsoft Edge). This opens the page level code and reveals the specific code used for your button in a side window (see image).
  3. Select the highlighted value for the variable class.
  4. Copy/Paste the value (e.g. subscribe-btn) into notepad.

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Set up the Trigger Configurations for your Event Tags in Google Tag Manager.

  1. Click on Trigger Configuration and select Just Links.
  2. Do not tick Wait for Tags and Check Validation and select Some Link Clicks under This trigger fires on.
  3. Select Choose Built-In Variable under Condition, select either Click ID or Click Classes (in this example, we’ll be selecting Click Classes).
  4. Select Classes > Contains > Value of click (replace Value of click with the variable value you copied earlier, such as subscribe-btn), and click Save.

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Create new goals to track in Google Analytics.

  1. Click on Admin on the left sidebar menu in Google Analytics.
  2. Select the Property you want to create a goal for.
  3. Select a View to set up the custom goal.
  4. Click Goals under the view column.
  5. Click + New Goal for each action you want to track (e.g. Form Signup).
  6. Select Custom under Goal Setup.
  7. Name the Goal (e.g. “Subscribe”).
  8. Leave the Goal ID field as the default selection.

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Choose your Goal Type based on the goals you want to track.

You can use different options to track your goal:

  • Destination: Counts a Goal completed when a user visits a specific page or URL.
  • Event: Goal completed when Google Analytics tracks interactions on website through Event Tracking.

For instance, if you want to create an event goal (such as when a user clicks a subscribe button), select Event and click Continue. Next, enter the Category, Action, and Label values for the Event you created earlier and click Save.

For example: Category: Lead Magnet, Action: Download, and Label: 5 Ways to Lose Fat.

Open an Incognito tab in your browser and enter the URL of your website with the embedded URL parameters to test your Google Analytics Goal setup for each conversion goal you want to track.

For example: “https://google.com/**`?utm_source=cold-email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=broadcast`**”

Go through all the steps you have configured as action items to track until you complete all the goals you want to track. Next, access your Google Analytics Dashboard, select the Goal Overview Report under Conversions from the left sidebar menu, and check for the Goal Completion.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T11:15:39Z