Ahoy Email

First-party email analytics for Rails

🔥 For web and native app analytics, check out Ahoy

🚄 To manage email subscriptions, check out Mailkick

Installation

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem "ahoy_email"

Getting Started

There are three main features, which can be used independently:

• Message history
• UTM tagging
• Click analytics

Message History

To encrypt email addresses with Lockbox, install Lockbox and Blind Index and run:

rails generate ahoy:messages --encryption=lockbox
rails db:migrate

To use Active Record encryption, run:

rails generate ahoy:messages --encryption=activerecord
rails db:migrate

If you prefer not to encrypt data, run:

rails generate ahoy:messages --encryption=none
rails db:migrate

Then, add to mailers:

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  has_history
end

Use the Ahoy::Message model to query messages:

Ahoy::Message.last

Use only and except to limit actions

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  has_history only: [:welcome]
end

To store history for all mailers, create config/initializers/ahoy_email.rb with:

AhoyEmail.default_options[:message] = true

Users

By default, Ahoy Email tries @user then params[:user] then User.find_by(email: message.to) to find the user. You can pass a specific user with:

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  has_history user: -> { params[:some_user] }
end

The user association is polymorphic, so use it with any model.

To get all messages sent to a user, add an association:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :messages, class_name: "Ahoy::Message", as: :user
end

And run:

user.messages

Extra Data

Add extra data to messages. Create a migration like:

class AddCouponIdToAhoyMessages < ActiveRecord::Migration[8.0]
  def change
    add_column :ahoy_messages, :coupon_id, :integer
  end
end

And use:

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  has_history extra: {coupon_id: 1}
end

You can use a proc as well.

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  has_history extra: -> { {coupon_id: params[:coupon].id} }
end

Options

Set global options

AhoyEmail.default_options[:user] = -> { params[:admin] }

Use a different model

AhoyEmail.message_model = -> { UserMessage }

Or fully customize how messages are tracked

AhoyEmail.track_method = lambda do |data|
  # your code
end

Data Retention

Delete older data with:

Ahoy::Message.where("sent_at < ?", 1.year.ago).in_batches.delete_all

Delete data for a specific user with:

Ahoy::Message.where(user_id: 1, user_type: "User").in_batches.delete_all

UTM Tagging

Use UTM tagging to attribute visits or conversions to an email campaign. Add UTM parameters to links with:

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  utm_params
end

The defaults are:

• utm_medium - email
• utm_source - the mailer name like coupon_mailer
• utm_campaign - the mailer action like offer

You can customize them with:

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  utm_params utm_campaign: -> { "coupon#{params[:coupon].id}" }
end

Use only and except to limit actions

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  utm_params only: [:welcome]
end

Skip specific links with:

<%= link_to "Go", some_url, data: {skip_utm_params: true} %>

Click Analytics

You can track click-through rate to see how well campaigns are performing. Stats can be stored in your database, Redis, or any other data store.

Database

Run:

rails generate ahoy:clicks
rails db:migrate

And create config/initializers/ahoy_email.rb with:

AhoyEmail.subscribers << AhoyEmail::DatabaseSubscriber
AhoyEmail.api = true

Redis

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem "redis"

And create config/initializers/ahoy_email.rb with:

# pass your Redis client if you already have one
AhoyEmail.subscribers << AhoyEmail::RedisSubscriber.new(redis: Redis.new)
AhoyEmail.api = true

Other

Create config/initializers/ahoy_email.rb with:

class EmailSubscriber
  def track_send(data)
    # your code
  end

  def track_click(data)
    # your code
  end

  def stats(campaign)
    # optional, for AhoyEmail.stats
  end
end

AhoyEmail.subscribers << EmailSubscriber
AhoyEmail.api = true

Usage

Add to mailers you want to track

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  track_clicks campaign: "my-campaign"
end

If storing stats in the database, the mailer should also use has_history

Use only and except to limit actions

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  track_clicks campaign: "my-campaign", only: [:welcome]
end

Or make it conditional

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  track_clicks campaign: "my-campaign", if: -> { params[:user].opted_in? }
end

You can also use a proc

class CouponMailer < ApplicationMailer
  track_clicks campaign: -> { "coupon-#{action_name}" }
end

Skip specific links with:

<%= link_to "Go", some_url, data: {skip_click: true} %>

By default, unsubscribe links are excluded. To change this, use:

AhoyEmail.default_options[:unsubscribe_links] = true

You can specify the domain to use with:

AhoyEmail.default_options[:url_options] = {host: "mydomain.com"}

Stats

Get stats for a campaign

AhoyEmail.stats("my-campaign")

HTML Parsing

By default, Nokogiri’s default HTML parser is used to rewrite links for UTM tagging and click analytics. This currently uses HTML4, which only allows inline elements inside links.

To use HTML5 parsing, create config/initializers/ahoy_email.rb with:

AhoyEmail.default_options[:html5] = true

History

View the changelog

Contributing

Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:

• Report bugs
• Fix bugs and submit pull requests
• Write, clarify, or fix documentation
• Suggest or add new features

To get started with development:

git clone https://github.com/ankane/ahoy_email.git
cd ahoy_email
bundle install
bundle exec rake test