Integrate Google Analytics with Mailchimp

If you have a Google Analytics account, add Google Analytics tracking to your Mailchimp marketing emails to pass Google data back to your Mailchimp email reports. Set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics to track contacts based on clicks and purchases on your website.

We can also store your Google Analytics ID to track visits to your campaign pages and hosted campaign archive, so you can see traffic to these pages in your Google Analytics account.

In this article, you’ll learn how to add Google Analytics tracking to your emails, customer journeys, A/B tests, campaign archives, and audience pages.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• This article is about how to add Google Analytics to marketing emails that you send to your audience. To learn how to use Google Analytics on a landing page or website, check out Use Google Analytics on Landing Pages and Websites.
• You need an Admin user level or higher to connect this integration.
• You must have a Google Analytics account to complete this process. To sign up, visit analytics.google.com. If you already have a Google Analytics account, be sure that you've upgraded to Google Analytics 4. For more information, visit Make the switch to Google Analytics 4.
• When you add Google Analytics tracking to a marketing email, we supply a default title for that email. This title will appear in your Google Analytics account and your tracking URLs. If you choose to edit the default title, make sure you don't include any special characters. These can break your URLs.
• Google Analytics won't track redirects that don't contain embedded Google Analytics code. To ensure proper tracking, use direct links to pages where Google Analytics code is embedded.
• We strongly recommend you thoroughly test marketing emails that use Google Analytics tracking to ensure your links function properly.
• To track only the HTML version of your marketing email, and not the plain-text version, you can create a custom tracking code using Google's resources and add it to the HTML of your email. If you set up tracking this way, you won't be able to see the Google Analytics statistics in Mailchimp.
• Google offers several free, online courses designed to help you increase your analytics knowledge. For more information on how to set up Google Analytics tracking manually, take a look at Google's help pages for URL building and tagging your links.

Connect Mailchimp with your Google account

You'll need to authorize a connection between Mailchimp and a Google Analytics account before you add Google tracking to your marketing emails.

To connect your Mailchimp account with a Google account, follow these steps.

1. Click Integrations.
   
2. Click Google Analytics.
   
3. Click Connect. If you're not already logged into your Google account, you'll be asked to log in.
   
4. Click Allow to grant Mailchimp access to your Google account.

You'll return to your Mailchimp account and a success message will appear. Now you're ready to add Google Analytics tracking to your regular marketing email

Add tracking to your regular marketing email

To add Google Analytics tracking to a regular marketing email in Mailchimp, follow these steps.

1. Create a regular email.
2. In the Settings & Tracking section of the email builder, check the box next to Google Analytics link tracking.
3. Click Save.

When you check the box to enable tracking, we'll show the email title as it will appear in your Google Analytics account after the email is sent. The Google Analytics title combines the Mailchimp marketing email title with the date to make it easy to search for in your Analytics dashboard.

Add tracking to your customer journey emails

To add Google Analytics tracking to all of your customer journey emails in Mailchimp, follow these steps.

1. Create a customer journey.
2. Click Edit Settings.
   
3. Check the box next to Google Analytics link tracking.
   

To edit the Google Analytics UTM parameters for an individual email in the journey, follow these steps.

1. Click the three vertical dots for the email action you want to work with, then click Modify UTM Parameters.
2. Click the drop-down menu next to the UTM parameters you want to work with and edit each parameter. Make sure no field is left blank.
   
3. Click Save.

To default back to the original UTM parameters, click Reset Defaults.

If you use Classic Automations, Google Analytics can be added to them. The only exception is the single welcome email. That automation type doesn’t accept Google Analytics tracking.

Add tracking to your A/B test

To add Google Analytics tracking to your A/B test in Mailchimp, follow these steps.

1. Create an A/B test.
2. Navigate to the Setup step.
3. Under Tracking, click the Google Analytics link tracking box.
   

When you check the box to enable tracking, we'll show the campaign title as it will appear in your Google Analytics account after the A/B test is sent. The Google Analytics campaign title combines the Mailchimp A/B test title with the date and the Campaign ID.

Find the unique web ID for each version of an email

For A/B tests that test content, each combination of the test will have a different web ID. Before you send your A/B test, make a note of these unique IDs so you'll know which Google Analytics title goes with which combination of your email.

To find each combination's unique web ID, follow these steps.

1. Create each email variation of your A/B test.
2. On the Design step in the content builder, click the Preview and Test drop-down menu, and choose Enter Preview Mode.
3. Find the unsubscribe link in your email, right click, and copy the link address. You'll typically find the unsubscribe link in the footer.
4. Paste the link into a text file, so you can view the entire link, and find the value that follows c= at the end of the link address. Write down this value and the combination title or description it goes with so you can reference it when you view your data in Google Analytics later.

View Google Analytics data

With the update to Google Analytics 4, statistics for marketing emails and customer journeys with Google Analytics enabled can only be viewed in your Google Analytics account.

For definitions of the terminology used in the GA4 report, check out Google's support documentation.

Add tracking to email campaign archives and pages

To add Google Analytics tracking to your email campaign archives and pages, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click Audience dashboard.
2. If you have more than one audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click the Manage Audience drop-down and choose Settings.
4. Click Google Analytics on archive/audience pages.
5. Enter your Google Analytics tracking ID and click Save.
   

All set! A summary of this traffic can be found in your Google Analytics reporting under Traffic Sources.

Troubleshooting

Consider these possibilities if you see behavior you don't expect.

• Was your Google Analytics account set up after the marketing email went out?
  Google Analytics can't work retroactively. The Google Analytics account has to be set up and configured before the tracked email is sent.
• Is this a new Google Analytics account?
  We've seen with new accounts that it can take a few days to actually have data start populating. This delay can be made worse if the account is set up close to the weekend because sometimes data aggregation slows and gets pulled in on Monday.
• Is Google Analytics turned on in the settings?
  To double check, replicate the email, and look at the tracking options you selected.
• Have you tested the Google Analytics URL parameters?
  Google's URL builder lets you manually add custom analytics parameters to a website URL. Copy and paste the URL you created into your web browser's address bar, then press enter. If everything is set up correctly in Google Analytics, a record of this visit should appear in your Google Analytics account.
• Does your website code allow the following external variables?
  utm_source=
  utm_campaign=
  utm_medium=
  utm_term=
  For the sake of page security, a link is designed to fail if a query value outside of what is expected is fed into a page. This can break your links and disable the tracking if these are not accepted by your website.
• Did you set a link to a file instead of a page on your website?
  When using Google Analytics to track your links, the most common setup is to have the JavaScript tracking code for Google Analytics placed on a page where your contacts visit. This is a great solution if your landing page is an actual URL your contacts will be visiting. Then when the page loads, it can load the JavaScript and track the information in Google Analytics as expected. However, if it's a direct link to a resource like a document, PDF, or JPG, to track this link when using Google Analytics you may need some custom tracking methods setup on your server to track that particular link to your resource.
• Is there a space after the URL in your email?
  Google Analytics won't work if there is a space after the URL in the email.
• Is there more than one type of Google Analytics tracking on your links?
  If you combine Mailchimp's Google Analytics tracking with custom UTM tracking, this could skew results in reports. We recommend choosing only one type of Google Analytics tracking.