Choose names you can recognize later

Suppose you send a weekly newsletter and want to know whether this week's message brings people to your workshop page. Use weekly_newsletter as the source, email as the medium, and workshop_oct26 as the campaign. These are hypothetical names you can replace with your own.

The source identifies the newsletter. The medium describes the kind of traffic, and the campaign names this particular send or promotion. Keep a small list with the send date, destination page, and agreed names so you can find them again next month.

Sources: Google Analytics: source, medium, and campaign definitions

For a made-up workshop page, your link could be: https://example.com/workshop/?utm_source=weekly_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=workshop_oct26&utm_content=top_button. Replace example.com and the page path with your own destination. Google's Campaign URL Builder can assemble the address for you.

Use the same source, medium, and campaign for links belonging to this send. If a top button and a text link point to the same page, give them different utm_content values, such as top_button and text_link. This optional label helps you distinguish the placements later.

Keep values lowercase and spell them consistently: Workshop_Oct26 and workshop_oct26 can appear separately. If your email tool already adds UTM labels, check its settings before adding your own. You want one agreed value for each parameter.

Sources: Google Analytics: campaign URL labels, naming, and URL builder

Send yourself a preview from your email tool. Click the actual button in that email. Check that it opens the right page and that the final address keeps the intended UTM values, including after any redirect to another address.

Check the text link too. If the email tool adds campaign labels automatically, compare the final values with your naming list. Save both finished addresses beside the send date; this makes a missing campaign easier to investigate.

Keep names and email addresses out of the labels. Use a campaign name shared by the send, never a recipient's address. Google says page addresses and campaign parameters must not send personally identifiable information, such as an email address, to Analytics.

Sources: Google Analytics: keep personal information out of URLs and campaign parameters

Find the newsletter visits in GA4

Open Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition and choose dates covering your send and the days after it. If the report isn't in your navigation, ask an Editor or Administrator to add it. A session is a group of activity during a visit; Sessions is the count you'll use here.

Change the table's main dimension, meaning its row label, to Session campaign. Search for workshop_oct26. Add Session source / medium as a second dimension to check for weekly_newsletter / email. This keeps the newsletter separate if you reuse a campaign name elsewhere.

To compare the button and text link, look for Session manual ad content in a report or exploration. An exploration is GA4's workspace for building your own analysis. That dimension holds the utm_content label, even though these are newsletter links rather than ads.

Sources: Google Analytics: Traffic acquisition report and session dimensions · Google Analytics: UTM parameters and their reporting dimensions

What do the numbers tell you?

The campaign helps you find recorded website visits. It doesn't tell you how many people opened the email or prove that every visit came from an original recipient: someone can forward the message or share its labeled link.

Don't expect one session for every click. GA4 doesn't start a new session just because someone follows a different campaign link during an existing visit. Consent choices, blocked tracking, and a page that never finishes loading can also leave gaps between clicks and recorded visits. See our guide to direct traffic if campaign information is missing.

Wait before judging a send: Google says processing can take 24–48 hours and report values can change during that time. Then check whether those visits included a completed inquiry or registration. If you haven't defined that action yet, start with our guide to choosing a key event, an action you mark as important in GA4.

Keep a short note of the dates, campaign, sessions, and completed action you checked. If one placement brought more visits, that gives you a question for the next send. It doesn't establish that the placement caused the difference; the wording and who saw each link may also matter.

Sources: Google Analytics: campaign changes during an existing session · Google Analytics: how consent choices affect collection · Google Analytics: processing delays and changing report values