Email signature analytics, done without a paid tool, measures one thing well and several things not at all. You can count visits to your website that began with a click on a signature link, by tagging each link with UTM parameters and reading the results in Google Analytics. You cannot count how many people saw the signature, whether an email was opened, or who clicked.
That is a smaller promise than the dashboards sold with signature software, and it costs nothing. This page gives you a naming convention for the tags, six steps to set them up, and a monthly sheet to record the numbers. It also says what the paid tools claim on their own pages, read on 5 October 2026, so you can judge whether you need one.
Email signature analytics in brief
- Add
utm_source,utm_mediumandutm_campaignto every tracked link. Google says to always use these three. - Use lowercase and one agreed set of names. Google treats
Emailandemailas different values. - Read the visits in Google Analytics under Acquisition, Traffic acquisition.
- This shows visits, not views or opens. emailfooter has no click analytics: its own analytics count copies and installs.
What email signature analytics can and cannot measure
A tagged link works because the tag travels with the click. When a person follows the link, the address carries the tags to your website, and Google Analytics records where the visit came from. Google’s page on URL builders says the parameter values show up in the Traffic acquisition report.
That sets the limits:
- It counts visits, not sightings. A signature seen a thousand times and never clicked leaves no trace.
- It cannot name the person who clicked. You see sessions, not readers.
- Only web links can carry tags. A
tel:ormailto:link does not open a web page, so there is nowhere for a tag to go. - Your website must already report to Google Analytics. The tag does nothing on a site that does not.
- Untagged links are invisible. One person who retypes the link by hand will not appear.
If you are comfortable with those limits, the rest is naming discipline.
A naming convention for email signature analytics
Google’s help pages define the parameters. The page on custom campaign URLs, which Google labels as a legacy Universal Analytics article, and the current URL builders page agree on the three you always need and on case: values are case sensitive, so utm_source=google is different from utm_source=Google. The current page adds that a missing parameter leads to (not set) in reports, and that you should use one fixed spelling for each value.
Here is a convention you can adopt as it stands. The values are our suggestion. The parameter meanings come from Google.
| Parameter | What Google says it is for | What to put for a signature | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
utm_source | The referrer | The place the link lives | signature |
utm_medium | The marketing medium (Google’s examples include email) | The channel | email |
utm_campaign | Product, slogan or promo code | A name for the purpose and year | staff-signature-2026 |
utm_content | Tells apart links in the same message | Which link was clicked | booking-link, logo, website |
utm_term | Paid keyword | Leave empty, it is for paid search |
Three rules keep the data usable:
- Lowercase, hyphens, no spaces. Google’s own example is that
SpringSaleandSpring_Salecount as two campaigns. - One owner for the list. If three people invent three spellings, you get three rows for one link.
- Team names go in
utm_contentor a separate campaign, never a person’s name. A name in a web address ends up in your analytics and in browser history, and it makes the address longer.
Set up email signature analytics in six steps
- Check that your website reports to Google Analytics. If it does not, set that up first.
- Write the convention on one page. The table above, with your own values.
- Build each address. Google’s page describes the Campaign URL Builder, and the manual form: a question mark after the address, then each parameter and value joined by an equals sign, with an ampersand between pairs.
- Open each tagged address in a browser. Confirm it lands on the page you meant.
- Put it in the signature as link text, not as the raw address. The long form is ugly if it shows. Our guide to adding a link to an email signature covers each mail app.
- Read the report on a fixed date each month. In Google Analytics, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition lists session source and medium, and session campaign.
A tagged booking link, for a made-up firm, looks like this:
https://quayside-accounting.example/book?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=staff-signature-2026&utm_content=booking-link
Here is a signature that carries one. The visitor sees the words “Book a meeting”; the tags sit in the address behind them.
|
The booking link carries its tags; the company website link stays plain. The company and person are made up.
A monthly sheet for email signature analytics
You do not need a dashboard. A spreadsheet with five columns is enough, and filling it in takes ten minutes.
| Month | Link (utm_content) | Sessions | Landing page | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
website | ||||
booking-link | ||||
logo |
Put the figures from Google Analytics in the third column and write what changed in the signature that month in the fifth: a new button, a new title, a rollout of a redesign. The notes matter more than the numbers. With a small team, a link may collect a handful of visits a month, and a difference of two or three means nothing. Compare quarters, not weeks, and do not read a trend into one month.
What paid tools say about email signature analytics
Several signature tools sell click reporting. The statements below are what each vendor’s page said on 5 October 2026. We have not tested any of these tools.
- Exclaimer. Its pricing page lists an engagement dashboard that measures click-throughs and supports A/B testing, and shows it as included on Pro and not on Starter or Standard.
- Letsignit. Its pricing page lists real-time click tracking for signatures and campaigns, and its campaigns page says the traffic appears in your Google Analytics console.
- WiseStamp. Its pricing page puts analytics, described as tracking clicks, engagement and conversion metrics, on the Grow plan and above.
- NewOldStamp. Its pricing page lists analytics among the features of its one public plan.
What these add over tagged links is a single place for the numbers and, in some cases, reporting by sender. What they cannot change is the underlying limit that a click is a click. For what these plans cost, see our page on email signature software pricing.
What emailfooter measures, and what it does not
emailfooter has no click analytics. The analytics page in the app counts how many times signatures were copied and how many installs were started, over time, by mail app and by person. The documentation says it counts recorded events only and cannot see whether a pasted signature is still in use. That makes it a rollout tool, useful for chasing people who have not started, not a marketing report.
For clicks, use the method on this page. The company website and each employee’s scheduling link are separate fields in emailfooter, so you can paste a tagged address into either. In the layouts we drew with, a tagged website address can appear in full as the link text, while a scheduling link shows behind a short label, so tag the scheduling link first. The drawn example above shows a tagged scheduling link kept intact behind its link text. If you want to try this with a banner, the campaign plan shows how to tag it and when to stop.
Keep email signature analytics honest
Report what you measured. “Forty visits came from tagged signature links in March” is a fact. “The signature generated forty leads” is a guess unless you also tracked what those visitors did. Decide in advance what you will do with the numbers, such as removing a link nobody clicks. For the bigger picture of what a company signature should carry, see our guide to company email signatures.
Frequently asked questions
How do I track clicks in an email signature?
Add UTM parameters to each link, then read the visits in Google Analytics under Acquisition, Traffic acquisition. Always include utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, as Google advises.
Can email signature analytics show who opened an email?
No. Tagged links record visits to your website after a click. They say nothing about opens or about people who read the signature and did not click.
Is there free email signature analytics?
Yes, for clicks, using UTM tags and Google Analytics. You pay only in the time it takes to keep the names consistent.
Does emailfooter track signature clicks?
No. It counts copies and installs started, by day, mail app and person. For clicks, tag your links by hand.
Keep reading
- Email signature marketing campaign: a banner plan for your whole team: Plan an email signature marketing campaign in seven steps: goal, banner, tagged link, dates and retirement, with honest expectations on volume and cost.
- How to add a link to an email signature: web, email, booking page and image links: How to add a link to an email signature as text or on an image in Outlook, Gmail and others, with tracking tags and the mistakes that break links.
- Email signature banner: sizes, hosting, alt text and when to retire it: An email signature banner done right: Google’s size limits, hosting options, an alt text pattern, a clutter-risk table and a rule for when to remove it.
- Company email signatures: roll out one consistent signature across your whole team: How to set up a company email signature for every employee: what to fix, what people fill in, four ways to deploy it, a rollout timeline and the limits of each.
Make every signature in your company match
emailfooter is a free WordPress plugin. You design the signature once, and each person adds their own details and installs it in their mail app. Prefer not to run a website? emailfooter Managed is the same software, hosted for you.