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Worked Examples

Three practical things people want from the Google Analytics addon, and one advanced one. Each assumes the addon is already enabled — see Setup & UTM Tagging if it isn't.

1. Prove how much revenue a campaign generated​

The question every email programme eventually has to answer: did this campaign actually make money? Opens and clicks won't tell you. Revenue in your own analytics will.

What you need first​

  • The Google Analytics tag already installed on your website. The addon doesn't put it there — it labels your links so the tag you already have can attribute the visit.
  • Ecommerce tracking or a key event (GA4's name for a conversion) already configured on your site, if you want revenue rather than just sessions.

Step 1 — Set your account defaults​

Open Settings → Google Analytics and turn on Tag links with UTM parameters:

FieldValue
Campaign Sourceemail
Campaign Mediumemail
Campaign Name{{campaign_name}}

The {{campaign_name}} token fills itself in per send, so every campaign is labelled with its own name without you touching this screen again.

Use Preview tagged URL to paste one of your real links and confirm the result looks right before saving.

Step 2 — Send the campaign​

Send as normal. Nothing else to do — tagging happens at send time, on each link's real destination, whether or not click-tracking is on.

Say the broadcast is named Summer Sale 2026 and contains a link to https://shop.example.com/sale. Recipients receive:

https://shop.example.com/sale?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Summer-Sale-2026

Step 3 — Read the result in GA4​

  1. In Google Analytics, go to Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition.
  2. Change the first dimension from Session default channel group to Session campaign.
  3. Find Summer-Sale-2026 in the list.

That row shows the sessions the campaign drove, and — if your site has ecommerce or key events configured — the conversions and revenue beside them.

Give it a day

GA4 typically takes 24–48 hours to finish processing standard reports. If you need to confirm the tagging works right now, use Realtime instead: click a link in the email yourself and watch the session appear with your campaign name.

Step 4 — Make it a habit​

Once this is set up it keeps working for every broadcast, campaign, trigger and drip. A month later you can group by Session campaign over a date range and rank every email you sent by the revenue it produced.

2. Settle which call-to-action actually works​

Most newsletters put the same link in more than one place — a big button near the top, a text link at the bottom. Which one earns its place?

utm_content distinguishes links that point to the same destination within the same email, which ordinary campaign tagging cannot.

How to set it up​

Account-level utm_content applies one value to everything, so this is a per-campaign job:

  1. On the broadcast, open the Google Analytics (UTM) panel.
  2. Turn on Override account UTM settings for this campaign.
  3. Set utm_content for the campaign — for example header_button.

To label two links within one email differently, give each link its own utm_content value directly in the link's URL when you build the content:

https://shop.example.com/sale?utm_content=header_button
https://shop.example.com/sale?utm_content=footer_link

The addon preserves existing query strings, so your values survive and the remaining UTM parameters are appended around them.

Reading it​

In GA4, open Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, set the dimension to Session manual ad content, and compare header_button against footer_link.

The interesting result isn't always the obvious one. A header button usually wins on raw clicks; the footer link sometimes wins on conversion rate, because the people who read to the bottom were more committed. Judge it on the conversions column, not the sessions column.

3. Compare two campaigns fairly​

You're testing something — a subject line, a send time, two different offers — and you want to know which produced more business, not which got more opens.

Give each variant its own campaign name so GA4 keeps them apart:

  1. On the first campaign, open the Google Analytics (UTM) panel, turn on the override, and set Campaign Name to spring-test-a.
  2. On the second, do the same with spring-test-b.
  3. Send both.
  4. In Traffic acquisition, grouped by Session campaign, the two appear as separate rows.

Compare their conversions and revenue side by side.

Why override rather than rename

You could rename the campaigns themselves and let {{campaign_name}} do the work. The override is better when you want analytics names that differ from the names your team uses internally — short, consistent, lower-case labels make for much tidier GA4 reports than "Spring Test (final v3 APPROVED)".

4. Build an engagement funnel in GA4 (advanced)​

This one needs GA4 Server Events configured, and it is genuinely optional — the first three examples cover what most accounts want.

With server events forwarding, GA4 receives email_sent, email_click, email_unsubscribe and email_bounce as custom events. You can chain those with what happens on your website:

  1. In GA4, go to Explore and create a Funnel exploration.
  2. Add steps in order: email_sent → email_click → your purchase or signup event.
  3. Apply a date range covering the campaign.

The result shows the drop-off at each stage — how many recipients clicked, and how many of those went on to buy.

Custom events don't appear in standard reports on their own

GA4's standard reports won't show email_sent and friends until you either build an Exploration over them or mark one as a key event. If you've confirmed events are arriving but the standard reports look empty, this is usually why — not a delivery problem.

Leave opens out of the funnel

Open events are off by default because Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads images and inflates them heavily. Building a funnel on opens will overstate the top of it dramatically. Start at email_click.

When the data doesn't show up​

Attribution problems are nearly always one of these, in this order:

SymptomLikely cause
Nothing in Traffic acquisition yetGA4 is still processing — allow 24–48 hours, or check Realtime for an immediate signal.
Realtime shows nothing when you click your own linkThe Google Analytics tag isn't firing on the landing page. Verify the tag on your site, not in Mumara.
Sessions appear but under (direct)The link that was clicked lost its parameters — usually a redirect on your side that drops the query string.
Server events confirmed arriving, standard reports emptyCustom events need an Exploration or a key event; see the warning above.
Events vanished after testingDebug mode is still on. Debug traffic is excluded from standard reports — turn it off.
Unsubscribe clicks aren't taggedDeliberate. Exclude unsubscribe / system links is on by default so your analytics aren't polluted with system traffic.

Next steps​

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