Using Google Analytics to Track Email Address Signups

Posted by admin
June 9, 2009

If your website has an email sign up form you can use Google Analytics to keep track of which email addresses are signing up.  Simply use the parameter you are using to pass the email address as the query parameter in your Analytics Site search setup (go to Profile Settings and click Edit Profile on the profile you want to add this to).

Use parameter you pass on the email address sign up as your Site Search parameter

Of course, you’ll probably want to use a duplicate profile for this to avoid skewing the data on your main profile.  If you don’t know how to create a duplicate profile, I explain how on Track outbound links and file downloads with Google Analytics.

You can now track email address sign ups in Google Analytics.

The usefulness of this technique doesn’t end here. The Site Search section allows you to view performance of visitors who used your site’s keyword search.  In this case, you can use the same tools to see how visitors using the email sign up form are performing on your website.  You can also use Advanced Segments to compare how people who use the email sign up form behave (pages/visit, bounce rates, conversion rates, goal completions, etc) compared to those who don’t.  Learn how create Advanced Segments here if you don’t know how to use them.

Google Analytics How-To

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Comments

Um, am I missing something here? If your web site has an e-mail signup form, aren’t you capturing those e-mail addresses already? Why do you need Google Analytics to give you a list of e-mails you already have? Sorry, maybe I’m just not getting this.

Comment by Scott on June 10, 2009 @ 1:35 pm

Hi Scott,

Thank you for the great question. No, you’re not missing anything. Indeed, if you have access to whatever database your emails are importing into, you can get the email addresses from there. But keep in mind that not everyone who uses Google Analytics is a website owner. Someone in the company marketing department doesn’t necessarily have access to whatever database these email addresses are being hosted on. This would give them a certain amount of access to this data.

Also, even for people who do have access to the DB where emails are hosted, this tweak gives you the ability to look at the same information within Google Analytics (as opposed to logging in to different systems). Also, you would have some added metrics through the Site Search section (ie Time after search, E-commerce conversions for “searchers” vs. non-”searchers,” etc.). So you can measure their behavior and compare it to those who don’t sign up.

Once again, thanks for the great question.

Comment by Chris Casarez on June 10, 2009 @ 1:55 pm

Hey Chris,

This is awesome! I was having such a hard time figuring out a way to track email addresses on google analytics. But now I have a different question. If I were to send a google tagged URL to a lot of people through email. Is GA capable of tracking which email address clicked on the URL and ultimately reach the end of a goal or conversion?

I know how to setup goals/funnels. But I am having difficulty tracking which person clicked the URL and which haven’t.

Awesome website btw :)

Comment by Sai on June 23, 2009 @ 10:32 pm

Sai,

Thank you for the compliments! The only thing that comes to mind is tagging the emails separately. I don’t see an efficient way of doing this is you are manually emailing a group of people. However, if you are using an email service provider, there should be an option to add dynamic values.

If this is the case, you can use the email address as the campaign name. So for example, let’s say you are using Bronto as your email service provider, and the dynamic value they use to pull an email address is ##EmailAddress##. Furthermore, let’s say one of your recipients has the email address of johndoe@gmail.com.

When you tag your links in Bronto, you will tag them with the following tracking query;

…utm_source=Bronto&utm_medium=email&&utm_campaign=##EmailAddress##

In the example of John Doe, the query string on the link displayed on his end will look like;

…utm_source=Bronto&utm_medium=email&&utm_campaign=johndoe@gmail.com

From here you can do a certain level of cross-referencing between campaigns (email addresses), and goal conversions. You can also use advanced segments to pull really detailed information (though you will be limited to one email address at a time, or some other value like ‘gmail.com’)

If I can think of better ways of pulling this information, I will let you know! I hope this helps.

Comment by admin on June 25, 2009 @ 12:58 pm

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the useful info. I’d like to do this but one step further – is it possible to track where the signups came from? For example, did the user sign up coming from an Adwords ad, organic search, or one of my marketing emails?

Thanks!
John

Comment by John on December 18, 2009 @ 2:11 pm

Hi John,

Yes, you certainly can. There is now a 2nd filter fir dimension filtering. This didn’t exist when I wrote this post but it’s there now. So on my 2nd image, where you see the word “Search Terms” selected as the Dimension, there is now a 2nd Dimensions filter to the right, where you can select “Source,” and view the source for each email address.

Comment by Chris on December 19, 2009 @ 7:21 pm

Hey im not sure if this will work for me but some one has been posting my email address on a site which i dont know and im trying to find a way to track where its been posted??

Comment by callie on February 8, 2010 @ 4:05 pm

[...] The ability to have multiple profiles in Analytics is extremely convenient.  You can flip back and forth without having to switch accounts.  And the ability to create duplicate profiles for the same domain name, gives you the option of viewing a site profile with a specific filter (for example; seeing only traffic that resulted from social media networks, seeing a profile that returns keyword information with actual search engine rankings, or treating email sign ups as keyword searches so as to track email addresses that are entered). [...]

Pingback by Google Analytics - Spring Cleaning up and Organizing Duplicate Profiles on March 1, 2010 @ 3:26 pm
Leave a comment

(required)

(required)