The Ultimate 4 Step Guide To Google Analytics Pixel Tracking In 2021

Are you curious to know how you can build your Google Analytics Pixel tracking? Still, confused to find ways to track your email opens?

Here we are with the accurate ways of tracking email opens and how you can set up your Email tracking. 

Google Analytics Pixel Tracking can give you full detailed email information, and later you can boost up your marketing campaigns. Start optimizing your UTM to check the post-click performance. 

It’s not compulsory to have any technical knowledge or expertise to use these approaches. The only thing is that you should follow our instructions closely and try to keep a simple structure of URL and UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters. 

So, we are going to learn;

• How to track emails? 
• How to measure user interactions?
• How to set up Google Analytics Pixel tracking?

Set up a Google Analytics Account

Let’s look at the basics and then move on to the email tracking system. 

Firstly, you have to make a Google Analytics Account, and it will make you do google analytics email tracking. 

But wait, it’s not that simple as it looks. You should have the ability to use Google analytics for free as it is not like the other Google products.

Next, you have to confirm that you are having access to your website. You can keep the hackers away from getting access who actually don’t own the websites. 

And here you go with successfully setting up the Google Analytics account. 

You should know that google analytics has special codes which are used for tracking pages. Most websites use JavaScript in the HTML code header on the web page, and the visitors can’t see it on the web page. 

So after loading the page, Google gets info about the visitor who opened the web page, what he clicked, other data like a web browser or location, and many more. 

The main difficulty is using Google Analytics pixel tracking is to track emails that won’t load JavaScript. Hence, we have to use effective ways to track the visitor who has opened or clicked our web page. 

We should not use a tracking code on a page; rather, we should inform our email clients to fetch an image. 

But it’s not the real image! It is a pixel that will ping our Google Servers. 

Later this ping will be registered with Google Analytics, and we can know if someone has requested the “image”.

Create a Google Analytics Pixel Tracking URL

Let’s start and learn piece-by-piece. 

Link with Google Analytics. Next, we have to put the domain name and a phase that will let the system know that we will be taking data. 

https://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1

Now we have to put some parameters for later steps. These will be specifying the various pieces of data in the URL. These are hidden within the URL, and you are using them for ages. So as you know now, it will be easy to find out URLs’ parameters on sites like Google, Amazon, and many more. 

The default version of a parameter is &name=value. 

If you are writing URLs for Cakes, you might write it as; 

&flavour=vanilla=2&serving=box

For the URL, you have to put these parameters. Some of them are useless, but you have to put them as Google Analytics Pixel Tracking to track the website.

tid = Your Google Analytics Pixel Tracking ID. You will get it at your Google Analytics account.

• Click on the Gear at the bottom
• Select Property Settings
• You will get Google Analytics Pixel Tracking ID at the top. Copy it

Things you should be knowing;

• cid = Customer ID. We’ll use 555 to track this anonymously.
• t = Hit type. We’ll call it “events.”
• ec = Event category. We’ll call it “emails.”
• ea = Event action. You want to track email opening, so we’ll go with “open.”
• dp = Document path. You can name it. We won’t use slashes, though, so we’ll need to use %2, which stands for slashes in URLs.
• dt = Document title. You can use any title, “My Newsletter.” But you have to remove spaces, so we’ll use the URL code for spaces—%20.

 If we put all these, then the URL we will be getting is;

https://www.google-analytic.com/collect?v=1&tid=YOURACCOUNTID&cid=555&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&dp=%2Femail%2Fnewsletter1&dt=%20Newsletter

To make it into an image, we have to put it into a basic HTML image tag. 

<imgsrc=”https://www.googleanalytic.com/collect?v=1&tid=YOURACCOUNTID&cidi=555&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&dp=%2Femail%2Fnewsletter1&dt=%20Newsletter”>

Include your image tag in the email

Sorry to say, but we can’t just drag and put it into an email. If we are doing it, then it will show HTML code as written. 

We have to hack this by building an HTML file and copy it into an email. 

Let’s know how we can perform this;

• Open a new text document. 
• Paste the image tag from the earlier and a small extra text to know if the page loaded properly. 
• Save it as an HTML file.
• Open it in the browser. 
• Select and copy. 
• Paste it into the email. 
• It has been seen that it performs well in Apple Mail than In-browser site like Gmail. 
• Send for testing

Use Google Analytics pixel tracking

To get started with Google Analytics pixel tracking, open Google Analytics.

Now we will be looking at the real analytics page. By this, we can know exactly how our email tacking is performing. 

Go to the email provider and click the link. 

But your email might not be opening. Gmail will try to prevent email tracking, save a copy of the picture, and keep it with itself. 

This shows that if someone opens an email, it won’t get registered. 

By Mailing Programs, these systems can work properly as Apple Mail, Outlook, ThunderBird, etc. 

To know the many total numbers of opens made in your email, then go to the Google Analytics Campaign Tracking. 

Next, by this, we can know if it is performing and get the real data. If you fetch the invisible image, then you just made it! Now you can paste this text to any email you feel like.

Final Thoughts

If you want to know more about your subscribers’ behavior, then Google Analytics pixel tracking is the best option.

• Build a trackable URL to know the open rates
• Start writing UTM codes to fetch the information about post-click activities

You have to track the key metrics to understand the subscribers and make strategies to boost your results.