A number of requests have come through recently asking if one can track email newsletters as “traffic” within Nielsen’s tools and the OPA rankings.
The answer is both Yes and No. Yes, you can request a special email tag from Nielsen to insert into your email HTML so you can get reporting on your emails within Site Census. You must also ask for a new channel to be setup for this so your reports make sense. Nielsen will assist you easily with this.
However! This additional traffic will NOT be counted for the Market Intelligence/OPA rankings, as Market Intelligence is about traffic on your website or mobile site only. It validates that the content being read is on the domain that you own - and an email on someone’s computer will not pass that test.
If you would like to setup this tracking for your own internal reporting and use within SiteCensus, please contact Nielsen support directly.
As an advice point, we recommend that you use a known bulk email provider / software solution to get email analytics that offer distinct insights and value. You can use web analytics to track the success / sources of your traffic online including your mailers.