Email traffic
Website visitors who arrive by clicking links in emails, including newsletters, marketing campaigns, transactional emails, and personal correspondence.
Email traffic represents visitors who click through from email messages to your website. This channel typically includes newsletter subscribers, marketing campaign recipients, and users clicking links in transactional emails like order confirmations.
Email traffic often represents your most engaged audience: people who have already opted in to hear from you. This typically results in higher engagement metrics and conversion rates compared to cold traffic from other channels.
Accurate email tracking requires UTM parameters since email clients don't always pass referrer information. Best practice is to tag all email links with utm_medium="email" and use utm_campaign to identify specific sends.
Analyzing email traffic helps measure the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts, understand which content resonates with subscribers, and calculate the ROI of your email program.
Frequently asked questions
Why does email traffic show as direct?
Email clients often strip referrer information, causing clicks to appear as direct traffic. Always use UTM parameters (utm_medium=email) on email links to ensure accurate tracking and attribution.
How do I track different email campaigns?
Use UTM parameters with utm_source for the email type (newsletter, promo), utm_medium=email, and utm_campaign for the specific send (e.g., "february-newsletter"). This enables detailed campaign-level analysis.
What is a good click-through rate for email traffic?
Average email click-through rates range from 2-5% depending on industry. Focus on the quality of traffic (engagement, conversions) rather than just click volume. Segmented, relevant emails typically perform better.