Do you know how many people are clicking on your mailto links? If you have a contact email address on your website, then tracking the link clicks in Google Analytics can reveal useful insights.
You can see if the link is performing better than the contact form. Or you can see how many clicks you got and how many people got in touch with your brand.
But that’s easier said than done. Tracking mailto links requires coding, which isn’t possible if you’re not a coder. And if you do try to edit the code, chances are that you’ll make a mistake and mess up your site’s tracking.
That’s why in this article, we’ll show you how to track mailto links in Google Analytics. There are 2 ways to set up tracking and they include:
You can jump ahead to any of these methods to learn more. Let’s start with a brief introduction…
What are Mailto Links?
Mailto links are the contact email address that’s displayed as a hyperlink on your website.
When a user clicks on the link, it will open their default email client (like Gmail or Outlook) and compose a new email where they don’t have to copy and paste the address.
Most of the time these contact email links are hardcoded into your website. So, they would look something like this if your view the HTML format:
<a href=”mailto:[email protected]”>Contact Us</a>
The problem with mailto links is that Google Analytics doesn’t track them by default. That’s why you need to use a third-party tool to get the job done.
Ready to see how you can set up Google Analytics mailto link tracking in WordPress?
Use MonsterInsights to Track Mailto Links – The Easy Way
The first and easiest way to track your mailto links in Google Analytics is through MonsterInsights. It’s the best Google Analytics WordPress plugin.
By using the plugin, you can automatically set up mailto link tracking in analytics. No coding or additional configuration required!
MonsterInsights tracks many events right out of the box. Events are different interactions a user makes on your website. These can as simple as downloading a file or clicking on a link, like your contact email address.
To start getting insights about how your mailto links are performing, sign up for a premium MonsterInsights plan.
Next, install and activate the plugin on your WordPress website. Then make sure you’ve properly set up Google Analytics in WordPress.
MonsterInsights will now start to track all your mailto links. You can then use the data to get insights about how people use your contact email address, their number of clicks, and more.
Besides this, MonsterInsights tracks other events as well. You can check our complete list of events MonsterInsights automatically tracks in Google Analytics.
Now, let’s look at the hard method of tracking mailto links in Google Analytics.
Use Google Tag Manager to Track Mailto Links – The Difficult Method
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is another tool offered by Google that lets you manage different tags on your website without editing code.
The reason why we say this is a difficult method is that it’s long and requires an understanding of how Google Tag Manager works. If you’ve never used GTM before, then we recommend using the first method.
But before you start, make sure that you’ve set up Google Tag Manager in WordPress and it’s connected with your Google Analytics account.
Then, go to your Tag Manager account, log in, and follow these steps:
Step 1: Go to Triggers from the options on your left and click New.
Step 2: Give a name to your trigger (we’ve named it Mailto Link) and the click pencil icon to select a trigger type. Choose Just Links under Clicks as your trigger type.
Step 3: Now, you have to select when do you want the trigger to fire. Check both the boxes, Wait for Tags and Check Validation.
And if your mailto link is on a specific page, you can even select a page on which the event will run. Select Page URL » matches RegEx » .* and this will enable the trigger on all your pages.
Next, select Click URL » contains and then enter mailto: in the last field. So, whenever someone clicks on the link, it will fire the trigger. Once this is done, click Save.
Step 4: The next step is to create a new tag. To do that, go to Tags from the home screen and click New.
Step 5: Give a name to your tag (we named it Mailto Links) and then click the pencil icon to configure your tag. Make sure you select the right Google Analytics property on which you want to create the tag.
Step 6: You’ll now see different settings for your tag. In the Track Type, select Event. Then under Category, enter Mailto Link and for Action, select Click URL.
If your mailto link is in the header and footer of your website and you want to find out which page did the click came from, then you can enter Page Path under Label. And if you don’t want this information, then you can leave the Label field blank.
For the rest of the settings, you don’t have to enter anything.
Step 7: Now scroll down and select the trigger for your tag. Click on the pencil icon and select the Mailto Link trigger that we created a few steps earlier. Once this is done, click Save.
Step 8: Your tag is now ready. You can Preview your new tag and see how it works when someone clicks on the mailto link.
After you’re satisfied with your tag, click Submit.
Step 9: To start tracking mailto link click events in Google Analytics, you’ll have to create a new goal. You can do that by going to your Google Analytics account and then navigate to Admin » Goals » + New Goal.
Step 10: Next, select Custom goal and enter goal description. Give a name to your goal and select the goal type as Event. Click Continue once done.
Step 11: For your goal details, you’ll have to enter the exact same details that you entered in Google Tag Manager. So, for Category, enter Mailto Links, and for Action, enter Click. After entering these details, click Save.
View Mailto Link Clicks in Google Analytics
Now that you know how to set up mailto link tracking in Google Analytics using 2 different methods, you might be wondering, how can you view the report?
You can see your mailto link clicks by going to your Google Analytics account. Then go to Behavior » Events » Top Events. Here you can see how many people clicked on your mailto links.
And that’s it!
You can now successfully get insights about how people use your contact email address.
If you’re a new Analytics user, then we suggest using MonsterInsights and follow the first method. It’s very easy and you don’t have to do any manual set up or change your site’s code.
We hope you liked our tutorial on how to track mailto links in Google Analytics. You can also go through our guide on how to track links and button clicks using Google Analytics.
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