Will the conversion code work in an email?

[venrooy]

One of my sites sends out an automated email after purchase. The template for the automated email comes from a page on my site. Will google's conversion code work in an email?

I'm having trouble getting an accurate conversion rate for this site. I have a congratulations page after purchase, but it seems that some don't stick around for it. Any suggestions, or software that might help?

Thanks

[dmorison]

You cannot guarantee it because there is no guarantee that any email client is going to process an HTML email as if it were a plain old web page.

It will only ever work "sometimes". A correctly formatted HTML email being viewed in Outlook Express on a Windows PC with the appropriate security settings will appear to the Internet just as any old web page being viewed within Internet Explorer - cookies and all, (because that's what the message pane is) and Google would not be able to tell the difference, but how many of your users will that apply to?

If conversion tracking is important to you then you should look at re-designing your sales process to ensure that your customer has to go via the page that contains the AdWords tracking code; anything else will always introduce an element of uncertainty.

[venrooy]

Thanks for the reply - I found this on google:

"Currently, Google can report only conversions for ads shown on Google and some Google Network sites or products. This means that not all conversions originating from your AdWords ads will be reported. However, your conversion rate, cost-per-conversion, cost-per-transaction, and value / click are adjusted to reflect only those sites from which we can track conversions."

I think I'll have to try something else. Anyone have any luck with analytics? Is the conversion tracking fairly accurate?

Thanks

[dmorison]

I would recommend that you consider conversion tracking on a relative rather than absolute basis.

As the AdWords FAQ states, conversion tracking is not 100% accuarate, and it would be unreasonable to expect it to be because of the lack of control over the end user environment (browser, cookies, security settings etc.).

However, that does not stop it from being valuable; all other things being equal you can tell which Keywords / AdGroups are performing well and which are not.

Even then, for the lesser performing keywords; the cost / conversion stat lets you push your spend right to the wire, providing that you have a good understanding of your margin and customer support costs. In other words; whilst your best performing keywords may produce a $100 sale for every $20 spend, it is probably still worth pursuing those keywords only producing 1 sale for every $40 spend.