Track mailto clicks as a goal on Google Analytics
Tracking conversions on a site is essential, most of the time you track on the completion of forms on the “thank you” page. Some sites have mailto links which open up blank e-mails, so how do you track clicks on such links?
Well take your standard link
<a href="mailto:info@domain.com">E-mail John</a>
Then add in the JavaScript tracking and ?subject=E-mail John to set a subject for the message (not essential but see later on).
<a href="mailto:info@domain.com?subject=E-mail John" onClick="javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview("/mailto/john");">E-mail John</a>
That page view “mailto/john” will start to appear as a page view on the top content section on Google Analytics
Next add that into a goal.
So at the end of the month you’ll be able to get a total of times the link has been clicked. Then check your inbox / ask the client how many e-mails they have received with the subject specified in the mailto link, in the example “E-mail John”. You then have the data work out of the conversion of clicks to e-mails received. E.g. 100 clicks 60 e-mails = 60% conversion.
If the conversion is low then you might want to change the link to go to a contact form, often people are more likely to fill out forms and some users won’t have their e-mail set up on Outlook which opens on the click of mailto links.
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Have you considered installing the db-cache plugin ? It will help your site load faster.
Will this technique not inflate the number of page views? As it’s artificially creating more page views via /mailto/john ?
Yes, it will increase the number of page views, but if you want to track people clicking on the mailto links and you want to track that as a goal you have to do it.
If you take a step back your not solving the problem here. You shouldn’t have mailto links if you can help it. They’re not great for the users as some people don’t have their emails set up on a local client, such as outlook or thunderbird. When they click the link, outlook express opens up, but they have no account configured.
It’s much better to have a email form that pops up or is present on the page, you can then track when the form submits and the user is taken to the thankyou page.