Track email open event with google analytics

Google Analytics has a great feature which allows us to track email open stats. It provide us a single url which is to be embed as an image with img tag. The url of the image contains all necessary parameters to track the event. The full image url sample would be something like this

http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-48261097-1&cid=2b884d0f825b&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&el=John+Doe&cs=productPromotion&cm=email&cn=businessEmail

URL Param	Description	Sample Value
v	Google Analytics (GA) Version Number	1
tid	Google Analytics Tracking ID	UA-48261097-1
cid	CLIENT ID (Random alpha numeric characters)	2b884d0f825b
t	Event Hit Type	event
ec	Event Category	email
ea	Event Action	open
el	Event Label (Unique identification for this recipient)	John Doe
cs	Campaign Source	productPromotion
cm	Campaign Medium	email
cn	Campaign Name Identifier	businessEmail

Make sure all values of the url parameters should be url encoded.

You can add this url in image tag like this in the bottom of your email content.

<img src="http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-48261097-1&cid=2b884d0f825b&t=event&ec=email&ea=open&el=John+Doe&cs=productPromotion&cm=email&cn=businessEmail"/>

You can track events in Google Analytics and you will see something like this

Google Anlytics Dashboard Preview