The next part of my Google Analytics unravelled series covers Email Reports. Scheduling these reports was one of the more recent additions to Google Analytics and they are now emailing people with existing analytics reports in place to let them know that they need to migrate to the new version of these reports.
Again this is another sign that you will soon not be able to access the old version of Google Analytics.
Scheduled reports can be incredibly useful. They allow you to send a snap shot of information in a PDF to either yourself or someone else. This can include a person who does not normally have access to your analytics.
Reports can be sent from any screen from within Analytics and the information can include data which has been filtered, had advanced segments attached to it or is a custom report.
To set up an email report in Google Analytics first go to the report you would like to send. Make sure that this report is set up with the view, data set and dimensions which you want it to show.
Once you have your data set up as you want it to be you will see an Email button (with the word BETA next to it) in the sub menu as shown below)
Click this button and the email scheduling tool will appear as shown below.
This form gives you a number of options
From will show the email address you have logged into Analytics with. To allows you to select who to send the report to. Multiple email addresses can be placed in this report and to do this the address separator is a comma. If you want a copy of this report to be sent to you then you will need to include you own email address in this box as you are not automatically copied in on these reports.
Subject can be set to whatever you want it to be, but it’s best to call this something useful for the people who are to receive the reports -including the data included and perhaps the frequency of the report.
Attachments allows you to select the format of the data to be sent. This can be a PDF, CSV, TSV, and TSV for Excel. I generally send these schedule reports as a PDF, but if you are sending something like ecommerce transaction data to your accounts person then they might want this data to be sent to them in one of the other formats to allow them to edit the file in Excel.
Frequency allows you to set how often a report is generated and the next section (currently showing day of the week) will update accordingly. The options available here are:
Once – for one off reports
Daily – can be sent once a day – no time options available for this report
Weekly – sent once a week and you can select the day of the week the report is sent
Monthly – sent once a month on either a specific numbered day (e.g. the 14th) or on the last day of the month. Currently it is not possible to send these reports on the third Monday or the 1st Friday of the month.
Quarterly – sent once every 3 months – no customisation available on this report.
Advanced Options just allows you to choose how long the report is active for, so if you have a short term campaign which you need to set up a daily monitoring report on but this campaign will only last for 2 months you can set the report to expire. By default this is set to 6 months.
The white text box below is for the content of the email and must be completed with at least some text.
Once you have completed this press send and your reports will be set up.
Only you can see and edit the reports you have created, so if a change is needed you will need to do this yourself.
Happy reporting.
