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Eloqua / Google Analytics Integration
Part two of my Eloqua and Google Analytics series. In this article I show you how to automatically tag every Eloqua email with UTM parameters using External Tracking, so your analytics team gets clean, consistent data.
📅 First published: 17 May 2019 · Updated and rewritten
Part 2 - Automatically setting UTM parameters on Eloqua emails
Welcome to part two of my guide to integrating Google Analytics with Eloqua. If you have not read Part 1 yet, I strongly recommend starting there as it covers how to design your UTM structure and build Google Analytics friendly campaign links.
You can find Part 1 here: Setting Up Google Analytics Friendly Campaign Links .
In this part we are going to take that UTM strategy and wire it directly into Eloqua so that every link in every email is tagged consistently, without anyone having to hand edit URLs.
Where we are in the 4-part series
- Part 1: Setting up Google Analytics friendly campaign links
- Part 2: Eloqua / Google Analytics integration (this page)
- Part 3: Passing GA data through Eloqua forms
- Part 4: Making GA data usable in reporting
Why bother integrating Eloqua with Google Analytics at email level?
After you have agreed a clean UTM convention, your web analytics team is happy: they get consistent parameters, no more fragile RegEx, and fewer “mystery” campaigns in the reports.
But as a marketer or marketing operations owner, you also need that data to be:
- reliable (no one forgetting to tag links)
- consistent across all emails
- easy to maintain as campaigns scale
Manually tagging every URL is a guarantee that something will be missed. Eloqua has a much better option: External Tracking, which can automatically append UTM parameters and values to every link whenever an email is sent.
By the end of this article you will have a working configuration that automatically tags all Eloqua email links for Google Analytics.
Step 1 - Navigate to Email Defaults and External Tracking
In Eloqua, go to:
Assets → Email Setup → Email Defaults
You will see a screen similar to this, with an External Tracking section towards the bottom.
At the top of the External Tracking section you can enable automatic integration with third party web tracking tools. Eloqua ships with several pre-built options, but in my experience they rarely match what the web analytics team actually wants.
The good news is that Eloqua lets us create our own custom configuration.
Step 2 - Open “Manage External Tracking”
In the External Tracking area, click on Manage External Tracking. Eloqua will open a new window where you can create and manage custom tracking configurations.
Click New to create a customised third party web analytics integration query string.
- Configuration Name - a clear name such as “Google Analytics - Global Email UTM”.
- Suffix - the query string that Eloqua will append to every link.
Step 3 - Define your Google Analytics UTM suffix
Before you start typing, talk to your web analytics team and agree exactly which parameters they need. In this example they have asked for:
- Campaign name
- Email name
- Medium
- Source
In Google Analytics terms, that translates to:
- utm_campaign - Eloqua campaign name
- utm_content - Eloqua email name
- utm_medium - “Email”
- utm_source - “Eloqua”
In the Suffix field we build the query string using a mix of fixed values and Eloqua field merges.
utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Eloqua&utm_campaign=<eloqua type="campaign" fieldname="name" />&utm_content=<eloqua type="emailfield" syntax="elqWAEmailName" />A quick breakdown:
- utm_medium=Email - fixed value, because the medium is always email.
- utm_source=Eloqua - fixed value, your email platform.
- utm_campaign=<eloqua type="campaign" fieldname="name" /> - merge in the Eloqua campaign name.
- utm_content=<eloqua type="emailfield" syntax="elqWAEmailName" /> - merge in the Eloqua email name.
The merges behave in the same way as any other field merge. Each time an email is sent, Eloqua resolves the campaign and email values at send time and appends them to the URL.
Step 4 - Activate your configuration in Email Defaults
Once you are happy with the suffix, click Save and Close. Eloqua will return you to the Email Defaults screen.
Now:
- Tick the External Tracking checkbox.
- Select your new configuration name from the dropdown.
- Click Save.
From this point on, every link in every Eloqua email that uses this Email Defaults configuration will have your UTM suffix appended automatically.
Common pitfalls and things to watch out for
- Hard-coded UTMs in the email. If you manually add UTMs to a URL in the email body, you can end up with duplicated parameters. Let the External Tracking handle it.
- Links that already contain a query string. Eloqua will append the suffix with an ampersand, but if you have unusual query parameters make sure they behave correctly with your UTM suffix.
- Multiple Email Defaults configurations. If you have different business units, be explicit about which configuration each BU uses.
- Changing naming conventions mid-campaign. Align your UTM naming convention with the analytics team before switching this on globally.
Testing checklist
- Send a test email to yourself from a real Eloqua campaign.
- Hover over the links and confirm that the UTM parameters are appended correctly.
- Click through to the landing page and check the URL in the browser address bar.
- Open Google Analytics Real Time → Traffic Sources and confirm that the visit appears with the expected source, medium and campaign.
- Repeat for at least one or two different campaigns and email assets to ensure the field merges behave as expected.
Conclusion
With a single External Tracking configuration, Eloqua can automatically tag every email link with clean, consistent UTM parameters. Your analytics team gets exactly what they need, and your marketers no longer have to worry about manually pasting UTMs into URLs.
In the next part of this series we will go one level deeper: capturing those UTM values through Eloqua forms, so that campaign, source, medium and content can be stored against the contact and used for segmentation and reporting.
For now, you have the foundations in place: a UTM strategy (Part 1) and a reliable way to enforce it on every Eloqua email (Part 2).
Need help wiring Eloqua into your analytics stack properly?
I work with teams who want clean, trustworthy tracking across Eloqua, Google Analytics and CRM. If you are planning an integration or want to fix what you already have, I am happy to review your setup.