How to fix ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’ in Google Analytics

What is ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’?

You get the ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’ Google Analytics notification when you are running email marketing campaigns that are either untagged or not tagged correctly:

Notification

To fix this issue you need to add campaign tracking parameters to the links embedded in your email campaign that links out to your website.

How to fix ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’

Follow the steps below to fix the ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’ in Google Analytics

Step-1: Navigate to the campaign URL builder tool  https://ga-dev-tools.web.app/campaign-url-builder/ 

URL builder

Step-2: Add the website URL (landing page where the user will be taken after clicking on a link in your email campaign). As a reference, I am using ‘https://example.com’:

website URL

Step-3: Add the campaign ID (optional). The campaign ID (utm_id) should be unique to identify it in Google Analytics. It can be an alphanumeric ID of at most 100 characters made up of numbers, letters or symbols. For example ‘summer2022’: 

campaign id

Step-4: Add the campaign source. Campaign source (utm_source) is used to identify the advertiser site, publication, etc that is sending traffic to your website. For example, ‘newsletter’, ‘google’ etc can be used as a campaign source. This is a required field. 

newsletter

Step-5: Add the ‘campaign medium’. Campaign medium (utm_medium) is a marketing medium. For example, ‘cpc’, ‘banner’, ‘email newsletter’ etc are examples of campaign mediums. This is a required field.

medium

Step-6: Add the campaign name. Campaign name (utm_campaign) refers to the name of your marketing campaign. You can also use slogans, promo codes, etc as campaign names. This is a required field.

campaign name

Step-7: Add the keywords associated with the campaign. The campaign term (utm_term) field is optional but should be used if your campaign has any keywords associated with it:

campaign term

Step-8: Add the campaign content. This field (utm_content) identifies the ad version. For example, if you have got two banner ads with the same email, you can use the ‘utm_content’ key and set different values for each. So you can later determine which ad version was more effective in terms of driving traffic and sales:

content

Step-9: You should now see your final URL in the ‘generated URL’ text box. Copy this URL:

genrated URL

Congratulations! You have successfully tagged the email campaign link. 

If the link that you just created looks very large you can use the ‘Shorten Link’ option. It will shorten your link with preserved query parameters. 

shortened link available

Now you can use this link in your email campaign.

Step-10: Once you have successfully launched your email campaign with new links that are tagged. You can navigate to the Google Analytics Notification and click on ‘Check again’.

check again

You should see the notification as resolved just like in the image below.

resolved

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About adding custom parameters to the email campaign URL

By adding custom parameters to the email campaign URL, you can collect email marketing campaign data in Google Analytics. 

This is very useful when you want to track the overall efficacy of the campaign and to identify the campaign traffic as referral traffic. This way you can also reduce direct traffic in Google Analytics.

When a user clicks a referral link embedded in your email campaign, the campaign tracking parameters that are added by you will be passed to the analytics and the related data is available in the ‘All Campaign Reports’. 

You can access this report by navigating to ‘Acquisition>> Campaigns >>All Campaigns. Now you should be able to see the traffic from the email campaigns like in the image below:

campaign reports

This report contains one primary dimension called ‘Campaign’. The values of this primary dimension are the names you assigned to your marketing campaigns.

campaign name in reports

If you want to know the campaign source (utm_source) then click on the ‘Source’ primary dimension:

campaign source

If you want to know the campaign medium (utm_medium) then click on the ‘Medium’ Primary Dimension:

campaign medium

If you want to know campaign content (utm_content) then click on the ‘Ad Content’ option under ‘Acquisition’ from the ‘Other’ drop-down menu:

campaign content

You should now be able to see the ‘Ad content’ as a primary dimension applied to the data table:

campaign content displayed

You can follow similar steps to know about the campaign keywords as well (utm_keywords). Click on the ‘Keyword’ option under ‘Acquisition’ from the ‘Other’ drop-down menu:

keyword

You should now be able to see the ‘Keyword’ as a primary dimension applied to the data table:

utm keyword
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Frequently asked questions about how to fix ‘Untagged Email Campaigns’ in Google Analytics.

Do I need to have all the campaign tracking parameters necessary while building the campaign URL?

There are five UTM parameters like “utm_source”, “utm_medium”, “utm_campaign”, “utm_term” and “utm_content”. Among these, only “utm_campaign”, “utm_source” and “utm_medium” are necessary parameters to have in the URL.

Do I need to have campaign parameters for all the links in the email campaign that points to the website?

Yes, to track each link in your email campaign that points to your website, it is necessary to have campaign parameters added. To distinguish these links you can use different values in the parameter ‘utm_content’ such as button, banner, or offer link, etc.

Is it necessary to use the Campaign URL Builder to tag the links?

The Campaign URL Builder is a tool used to easily build custom links with improved efficiency and accuracy. If you tag the URLs manually there are chances that you may add the tracking parameters incorrectly or do not maintain consistency in tagging. It is better to use the tool instead of manually tagging the URLs.

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About the Author

Himanshu Sharma

  • Founder, OptimizeSmart.com
  • Over 15 years of experience in digital analytics and marketing
  • Author of four best-selling books on digital analytics and conversion optimization
  • Nominated for Digital Analytics Association Awards for Excellence
  • Runs one of the most popular blogs in the world on digital analytics
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