Attribution
Email referral
Also called email traffic.
Email referral is visits tagged as coming from email. It depends on your tags, because many mail clients strip the referrer.
How it is measured
Links in your messages carry a medium of email, a source naming the list, and a campaign. Without tags, clicks from many mail apps arrive as direct.
Test your sends. Click through from a mail app, a webmail client, and a phone and see how each is labeled. Fix any send that shows up as direct.
Worked example
A boutique yoga studio sends a class-schedule newsletter to 3,200 subscribers. Analytics shows 430 email sessions, but the email platform reports 780 clicks.
The missing 350 are labeled direct because the button links in one template had no tags. After the template is fixed, the next send records 765 email sessions and 52 class signups.
How it differs
Email referral is a tagged channel. Direct traffic is the bucket for untagged visits. Untagged email clicks land in direct and understate email.
Common errors
Sending without tags. Using different spellings of the medium. Counting opens as visits. Using the same campaign name for every send. Forgetting transactional mail.
In practice
Tag every link in every template. Send yourself a test on three clients. Compare clicks from the email platform with sessions in analytics and chase large gaps.