Adobe Campaign Integration with Google Analytics: What Works

Adobe doesn't provide a native connector for an Adobe Campaign integration with Google Analytics. Adobe's Campaign v8 documentation lists connectors for Adobe solutions, two customer relationship management (CRM) systems and external databases. The only web analytics integration it documents is with Adobe Analytics. In practice, teams connect the two with UTM tracking parameters, the utm_ tags Google Analytics reads, on every link in their deliveries. They read results in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) reports and join deeper data in BigQuery.

This post explains how each method works and what GA4 can and can't measure about your emails. It also covers where the Measurement Protocol fits and how BigQuery ties the two data sets together. It ends with a setup checklist you can hand to whoever builds your templates.

Is there a native Adobe Campaign connector for Google Analytics?

No. Adobe's "Connect Campaign with your solutions" page for Campaign v8 lists seven Adobe integrations. They are Adobe Analytics, Experience Cloud Triggers, Experience Manager, Experience Platform, Journey Optimizer, Target and Workfront. It adds CRM connectors for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce, Federated Data Access to external databases, and X (formerly Twitter). Google Analytics isn't on the list.

The external accounts reference tells the same story. Its Web Analytics account type is described as the Adobe Analytics account. We checked both pages on 25 October 2026.

That doesn't leave you stuck. Adobe's Analytics integration page has a useful line for anyone running a second tool. If you use several audience measurement tools, you can select "Other" in the Partners list when creating the Web Analytics external account. A delivery can reference only one such account. So you adapt the tracked URL formula to add the parameters each tool expects.

So Google Analytics works with Campaign through standard web tagging, not through a connector. Do you also run Adobe Analytics? Then read our post on Adobe Campaign integration with Adobe Analytics first, because it changes how you set up the tracking formula.

How do UTM parameters work in Adobe Campaign emails?

UTM parameters (the utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign tags in a link) tell GA4 where a visit came from. Google's help centre says that when a user clicks a tagged link, the parameters are sent to Analytics. The values then show up in the Traffic acquisition report.

Campaign adds one wrinkle: its own click tracking. When tracking is on, Campaign rewrites each link to go through its tracking server first. Adobe's example shows a link changing to a redirect address of the form nlt.adobe.net/r/?id= followed by an identifier. The redirect records the click in Campaign and then sends the person on to your real destination URL.

That means the UTM tags must sit on the destination URL, so they survive the redirect and reach your site. You have two ways to put them there.

• Add them in the content. Put the full tagged URL on each link in the template. Or build it from personalisation fields, so the campaign name fills in automatically. This is the simplest route and easy to audit.
• Add them through the tracking formula. The Advanced tab of the tracking settings lets you personalise the calculation formula for tracked URLs. Adobe marks those settings as expert-only, and notes that tracking configuration is performed by Adobe for Managed Cloud Services deployments.

The first approach is usually the easier place to start. Links that contain personalisation need a specific syntax to stay tracked, so test those carefully.

How should you name UTM values for Campaign deliveries?

Consistent names matter more than clever ones. Google's guidance is to always set utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. It also warns that values are case sensitive, so "Email" and "email" become separate rows.

Here's a convention that suits Campaign deliveries. A tagged link would look like example.com/sale?utm_source=adobe_campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wk43_newsletter.

Parameter	Suggested value	Why
utm_source	adobe_campaign (or your newsletter name)	Identifies the sending platform consistently
utm_medium	email (or sms, push)	GA4's Email channel matches "email" in source or medium
utm_campaign	The delivery's internal name, lowercase	Joins GA4 rows back to the Campaign delivery
utm_id	A campaign ID you control	Google uses it to match uploaded campaign data
utm_content	A label per link, such as hero_cta or footer	Google suggests it to tell links in one email apart

The medium value does real work. Google's default channel group puts traffic in the Email channel when the source or medium matches email, e-mail, e_mail or e mail. Use anything else, such as "newsletter" as the medium, and your sends may land in a different channel or in Unassigned.

Missing parameters cause their own mess. Google notes that if you set one UTM parameter, you should set all the relevant ones. Missing values appear as "(not set)" in reports.

Where do Adobe Campaign results show up in GA4?

Start with Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition. Google lists Session source/medium, Session medium, Session source and Session campaign as the dimensions for custom campaign data there.

Filter Session medium to email and add Session campaign as a secondary dimension. You'll see sessions, engagement and key events for each Campaign delivery. Key events are what GA4 used to call conversions. Google renamed them, and "conversion" now means the actions used to measure ad campaigns.

Two reporting details catch people out. Google says UTM parameters are left out of the "Landing page + query string" and "Page path + query string" dimensions. They appear in Page location instead. And these are session-based reports, so a person who clicks twice in one visit shows as one session.

For revenue, use the ecommerce reports with the same campaign filter. Our tips to improve conversions using GA4 cover how to set up the events that make those reports useful.

What can GA4 measure from Adobe Campaign, and what can't it?

GA4 sees what happens after someone lands on your site or app. Everything before that, in the inbox, lives only in Campaign.

Metric	Where it lives	Notes
Sends, deliveries, bounces	Campaign only	GA4 never sees them
Opens	Campaign only	Measured by Campaign's tracking pixel
Clicks on tracked links	Campaign	GA4 shows sessions, not clicks
Unsubscribes and quarantines	Campaign only	Recorded by Campaign
Sessions and engagement after the click	GA4	Needs UTM tags on the destination URL
Key events and revenue after the click	GA4	Attributed by session source and campaign
Click-to-session drop-off	Both	Compare Campaign clicks with GA4 sessions

Expect Campaign's clicks and GA4's sessions to differ. Common reasons include consent banners that block tags and people closing the page before the tag fires. Bots and email security scanners that follow links add clicks, and repeat clicks inside one session add more. Some gap is normal. A sudden change usually means broken tagging.

What does a combined Campaign and GA4 report look like?

A useful weekly email report takes inbox metrics from Campaign and on-site results from GA4, lined up by campaign name. Because utm_campaign carries the delivery's internal name, the two halves join cleanly.

For each delivery, show these columns from Campaign: messages delivered, unique opens, unique clicks and opt-outs. Then add these from GA4: sessions, engaged sessions, key events and revenue for that Session campaign. Two ratios tell the story. Clicks to sessions shows tracking health, and sessions to key events shows landing page performance.

Where does it live? Small teams often paste both exports into a spreadsheet each week. That works until someone forgets. Larger teams build it in a dashboard tool on top of BigQuery, which we cover below.

Whatever the tool, agree the rules once. Opens and clicks come from Campaign, and sessions and revenue come from GA4. Nobody compares Campaign clicks with GA4 sessions as if they were the same number.

When does the GA4 Measurement Protocol help?

The Measurement Protocol lets a server send events straight to Google Analytics as standard web (HTTP) requests. It's useful for actions that happen off the website, such as an order confirmed in a back-office system after an email click.

Google is clear about its limits. Its developer documentation says the protocol is meant to augment automatic collection through gtag, Tag Manager and Firebase, not replace it. You must use that tagging as well. Requests need an API (application programming interface) secret created in GA4. For web streams, the client_id must match the ID generated by the GA4 tag on your site. Events can be backdated up to 72 hours.

So what's a realistic Campaign use? Capture the GA4 client_id when someone lands from an email and store it with the order. Later, send the offline conversion through the Measurement Protocol. It ties the outcome back to the original session and its email source.

What it isn't for is pushing Campaign's sends and opens into GA4. Those events don't happen in a browser with a GA4 client_id, so they'd arrive as disconnected events with partial reporting. Google also says some event and parameter names are reserved and can't be sent this way. Keep inbox metrics in Campaign and join them elsewhere.

How do you join Campaign and GA4 data in BigQuery?

BigQuery is where the two data sets meet properly. GA4 can export all raw events to BigQuery. Campaign v8 can query BigQuery, and export data to it, through Federated Data Access (FDA).

On the Google side, GA4 offers a daily export and a continuous streaming export. Google says standard properties have a daily export limit of 1 million events, with no limit on streaming export. You can start in the free BigQuery sandbox, within its limits. Each event carries a collected_traffic_source record with fields such as manual_campaign_name, manual_source and manual_medium, which hold the UTM values. Your utm_campaign value is the join key back to the Campaign delivery.

On the Adobe side, Campaign v8's compatibility matrix lists Google BigQuery as a supported FDA database. Adobe's FDA page describes it as a batch tool for workflows. It isn't recommended for unitary operations such as personalisation or real-time messaging. As a Managed Cloud Services customer, you ask Adobe to connect the external database.

That gives you two useful patterns:

• Reporting. A Campaign workflow writes delivery and tracking aggregates into a BigQuery table. Analysts join them to GA4 sessions and revenue by campaign name and build one report from send to sale.
• Targeting. A Campaign workflow queries a BigQuery table of site behaviour, such as people who viewed a category but didn't buy. It then targets them, provided you have a key that links GA4 users to Campaign profiles, such as a logged-in user ID.

The second pattern needs care with identity and consent, and with how often the workflow runs. If your team doesn't have BigQuery skills in-house, the BigQuery partner list is a starting point.

What privacy and data quality pitfalls should you avoid?

The biggest risk is sending personal data to Google by accident. Google's policy says no data may be passed to Google that it could recognise as personally identifiable information (PII). It names email addresses specifically. Its guidance says both URL paths and parameters must be free of PII, including utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_campaign and utm_content.

That matters in Campaign because personalisation is easy. A template that adds the recipient's email address to a link "for convenience" will send it to GA4 on every click. Keep person-level identifiers out of links altogether, and tag at campaign and link level only. GA4 does offer data redaction for web streams, which removes email addresses on a best-effort basis. Treat that as a safety net, not a plan.

Other pitfalls are about consistency:

• Mixed case. "Spring_Sale" and "spring_sale" are different campaigns to GA4.
• Free-text campaign names. Use the delivery's internal name, not a label someone types each time.
• Untagged links. Footer, social and mirror page links often get missed.
• Redirect stripping. Some landing pages or link shorteners drop query strings. Click a proof link and check the final URL in your browser.
• Consent. If your banner blocks GA4 until consent, email traffic from people who decline won't show up. That's expected, not a bug.

Setup checklist: what to do next

Use this checklist to get Campaign and GA4 working together:

• Agree a UTM convention: source, medium, campaign, content and, if you use it, utm_id. Keep everything lowercase.
• Build tagged links into your delivery templates, with utm_campaign drawn from the delivery's internal name.
• Decide whether to use the "Other" partner tracking formula. If you also run Adobe Analytics, involve Adobe, since the formula carries both tools' parameters.
• Check no template puts email addresses or other PII into links.
• Send a proof, click every link and confirm the final URL keeps its parameters.
• In GA4, save a Traffic acquisition view or exploration filtered to medium "email".
• Turn on BigQuery export if you need person-level or send-to-sale reporting, and ask Adobe about an FDA connection to BigQuery.
• Document which metrics come from Campaign and which from GA4.

For the wider Campaign build, see our Adobe Campaign implementation guide. For GA4 audience ideas once the data flows, read ten GA4 audiences every ecommerce site should build.

If you need specialist help on the Google side, the GA4 partner finder lists firms with GA4 work. For the Campaign side, start with the Adobe Campaign partner finder or the Adobe Campaign request for proposal (RFP) template.