How to Track Email and Banner Ad Campaigns in Google Analytics (2026 Guide)

Running an email newsletter or a digital banner campaign requires time and budget. If you send traffic to your website without appending specific tracking codes to your links, that traffic gets bundled into Google Analytics under generic labels like "Direct" or "Referral". When this happens, you lose the ability to measure which specific email or banner actually generated sales.

Here is exactly how to use UTM parameters to track your external campaigns in Google Analytics 4 (GA4), ensuring every click is measured accurately.

What are UTM parameters and how do they work?

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are short text codes that you add to the end of a website link. They do not change the content of the page; they simply tell Google Analytics exactly where the visitor came from.

A standard website link looks like this: https://www.yourbusiness.co.nz/shop

A tracked link with UTM parameters looks like this: https://www.yourbusiness.co.nz/shop?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=april_sale

When a user clicks the tracked link, GA4 reads the parameters and categorises the visit accordingly. You must use three core parameters for every campaign:

• Source (utm_source): The specific platform or publisher sending the traffic (e.g., klaviyo, nzherald, mailchimp).
• Medium (utm_medium): The type of marketing channel (e.g., email, banner, cpc).
• Campaign (utm_campaign): The specific name of your promotion (e.g., winter_clearance, welcome_series).

You do not need to write these manually. You can use Google’s free Campaign URL Builder to generate clean, error-free links before you paste them into your ads or emails.

How do you track email campaigns correctly?

Most New Zealand businesses use platforms like Klaviyo or Mailchimp to send newsletters. While these platforms provide their own internal reporting, their built-in data often focuses on top-level engagement. For example, a campaign report showing 1,317 actions may be referring strictly to email opens, rather than the total number of recipients who actually clicked through to your website.

To see what those users do after they open the email and arrive on your site, you must integrate GA4 tracking. Most email platforms have a global setting to "Automatically add Google Analytics tracking" to all outgoing links. If you enable this, the platform will automatically append the utm_medium=email parameter to every link in your newsletter, saving you from tagging each button manually.

How do you track banner ads on local websites?

If you buy display advertising on local New Zealand publishers like Stuff or the NZ Herald, or sponsor an industry-specific directory, you must supply them with UTM-tagged URLs alongside your banner graphics.

Do not simply hand them your homepage address. If you do, GA4 will likely miscategorise that expensive banner traffic as generic referral traffic, making it impossible to measure your return on investment. Always supply a link formatted like this: ?utm_source=stuff&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=brand_awareness

Where do you view this campaign data in GA4?

Once your tracked links are live and people start clicking them, the data flows directly into your Google Analytics 4 dashboard.

To view the performance of your campaigns:

1. Log into your GA4 account.
2. Navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.
3. Scroll down to the main data table.
4. Above the first column, click the dropdown menu (which usually defaults to "Session default channel group") and change it to Session source / medium or Session campaign.

This report will now display exactly how many visitors came from your specific email or banner, how long they stayed on the site, and whether they completed a purchase or submitted an enquiry form.

Who should own your tracking accounts?

Clean data is the foundation of any successful digital strategy. If you hire an external agency to set up your GA4 property, configure Google Tag Manager (GTM), or run your Google Ads, you must insist on direct administrative ownership of all accounts.

Your business should hold the primary Admin rights to GA4 and GTM at all times. An agency should only ever be granted standard access to manage the work. If you decide to change marketing partners in the future, retaining ownership ensures you never lose your historical conversion data.