Tracking Salesforce Emails Using UTM Parameters and Google Analytics(GA4)

Implementing UTM parameters in your Salesforce email campaigns and tracking the data in Google Analytics (GA4) can significantly enhance your ability to analyze and optimize marketing efforts.

Say, for instance, You have launched a campaign where emails are being sent from Salesforce, and each email contains a redirect link to your website. As users click on these links, they land on your website, but users are also coming from different sources such as social media platforms, search engines, or referral websites. Now, to better understand your audience and optimize your marketing efforts, you want to track and analyze the source of your users, i.e., where they are coming from.

By leveraging UTM parameters and integrating them with Google Analytics, you can accurately attribute the source of your website traffic. This enables you to identify which sources drive the most visitors to your site, evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, and make data-driven decisions to enhance your overall marketing strategy.

So, here we will go through the step-by-step process of setting up UTM parameters in your Salesforce emails, configuring Google Analytics to capture the UTM data, and analyzing the results to gain actionable insights.

Process of Tracking Salesforce Email using UTM Parameters and Google Analytics are:-

Setting Up Google Analytics:

To start, we will set up Google Analytics (GA4) using Google Tag Manager by following the below steps.

First, create a Google Analytics account at analytics.google.com. Once you have entered all the necessary information, set the initial data stream as “Web” and provide your website URL.

Next, set up a Google Tag Manager account by creating a new account at tagmanager.google.com/.

And we will be redirected to this screen.

Within Google Tag Manager, you can configure tags for Google Analytics and choose triggers to activate those tags.

To set up Google Tag, you will need to provide your measurement ID, which can be obtained from your Google Analytics account.

Additionally, you will need to set up the appropriate triggers to activate the tags based on specific page actions.

Once you have completed the Google Tag setup, add a tag for your GA4 instance.

After completing the setup, remember to publish your changes. Then, copy the script for embedding the tags into your website. You can access this window by clicking on your Tag number in the navigation bar.

Finally, paste this tag in the header of your website, Google Tags will be applied and your website will start sending data to Google Analytics (GA4).

If you are also getting Analytics data from your site then move to the next step.

Adding UTM Parameters:

We are adding UTM Parameters to our website to get a source of our traffic. As in this scenario, we are trying to get data of users coming from salesforce emails.

For that, we have to configure our Tag in Google Tag Manager.

In our Google Tag, we have to add these parameters(These parameters are the corresponding parameters that are aligned with the UTM parameters).

After this configuration, we can publish the changes in Google Tag Manager.

Now, we can add UTM Parameters corresponding to these parameters to get the required data in Google Analytics(GA4).

For putting UTM parameters in your URL you can go to ga-dev-tools.google/campaign-url-builder/.

Here you can give values for the parameters and it will generate a link with UTM parameters

Testing UTM Parameters:

Now after all the configurations are done and we have our website link with UTM parameters, we can test this by creating an email template in Salesforce and sending our website in that.

Here is an example template that I created with the link:

After clicking on this user will be redirected to our website and its data will be sent to Google Analytics there we can filter our traffic by source/medium and can get users that we got from our salesforce emails in our campaign.

Note: Data can take up to 24 hours to be reflected in Analytics Dashboard and reports.

Also read: 6 Best Practices For CAN-SPAM Compliance In Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Conclusion:

By following the steps outlined in this guide, you’ve established a connection between your email campaigns and website traffic, enabling you to gather valuable insights into user behavior and traffic sources. By consistently monitoring and analyzing this data, you can make informed decisions to optimize your email campaigns, allocate resources effectively, and maximize the return on investment for your marketing efforts. Remember to periodically review and refine your UTM parameters based on evolving campaign strategies and goals.

That wraps up today’s blog. We will be back with another interesting Salesforce development solution soon. Till then, stay tuned! If you have any questions or need assistance with your Salesforce implementation, feel free to contact us.