82% of marketers worldwide use email marketing, making it one of the most widely used digital marketing strategies today. Its popularity arises from the fact that it is an affordable and effective way to boost brand awareness, connect with audiences, and direct potential customers to perform a desired action.
As a result, measuring and tracking performance is crucial when leveraging email marketing. The email click-through rate (CTR) is an important metric you should track to help you determine whether your campaigns are successful.
On that note, this guide will discuss everything you should know about email CTR and offer practical tips for improving this metric today.
Keep reading to learn more.
Table of Contents
What is email click-through rate?
How to calculate email click-through rate
What is a good email click-through rate?
Why is email click-through rate important?
9 essential tips to improve your email CTR
Conclusion
What is email click-through rate?
Email click-through (CTR) rate is a marketing KPI that’s used to determine the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. This indicator represents the percentage of email recipients who have clicked on one or more links in an email.
When you email your subscribers, you want them to take action. For instance, you could want them to buy a product, join a program, or take a survey so that you can learn about their needs and interests.
In short, the email targeting your audience should include a call-to-action that leads them to a landing page so they can do what you want them to do. As they click on an email’s links, it contributes to your CTR.
How to calculate email click-through rate
To calculate your email CTR, divide the number of clicks by the number of emails you’ve sent successfully and multiply by 100.
For example, if you send 500 emails and 25 recipients click on a link, your click-through rate is 25 divided by 500 and multiplied by 100%, which is 5%.
What is a good email click-through rate?
According to market experts, a good email click rate ranges between 2 and 5%, depending on the industry. The retail sector’s CTR rate, at 0.7%, for example, is different from that of logistics, at 2.0%. The table below has a summary of the average click-through rate across different industries.
| Industry | Email Click-through Rate |
| Education | 4.4% |
| Real Estate, Design & Construction | 3.6% |
| Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Hunting | 3.4% |
| Healthcare Services | 3.0% |
| Media, Entertainment, Publishing | 2.9% |
| Government & Politics | 2.8% |
| Nonprofit | 2.7% |
| Others | 2.6% |
| Financial Services | 2.4% |
| Professional Services | 2.1% |
| Restaurant, Food & Beverage | 2.0% |
| Logistics & Wholesale | 2.0% |
| IT/Tech/Software | 2.0% |
| Consumer Packaged Goods | 1.9% |
| Advertising & Marketing | 1.8% |
| Travel, Hospitality, Leisure | 1.4% |
| Wellness & Fitness | 1.2% |
| Retail | 0.7% |
| Average Total | 2.3% |
Source: Campaign Monitor
Why is email click-through rate important?
CTR is a crucial email metric because of the following reasons.
- Conversion – More often than not, a high click-through rate leads to higher conversions, regardless of whether your goal is increasing sales, leads or web traffic.
- Engagement – If your email campaigns have a high click-through rate, it is because your audience finds the content engaging as it resonates with them.
- Feedback – CTR gives you insights into the type of content that interests your target audience, allowing you to fine-tune your strategy accordingly.
9 essential tips to improve your email CTR
After calculating your email click-through rate, you can compare it with industry standards and develop effective strategies that can help you improve your campaign efforts. The tips below are some ways to help you improve your email CTR.
1. Personalize your emails
Experts say personalizing emails can boost click-through rate by 14% and conversion rate by 10%. This means that if you are not personalizing your emails, you are missing out on potential customers as well as their business.
By personalization, it is not about using the recipient’s name on the email subject line. It also involves customizing their content based on their age, demographics, behavior, and things that interest them.
2. Craft compelling subject lines
In email marketing, subject lines are often the first step to capturing a user’s attention. Therefore, to improve your click-through rates, start by making a good impression on the subject lines.
A subject line should be clear, relevant, and able to create a sense of urgency to spark interest from a potential customer. Personalization, which involves using the recipient’s names on subject lines, is also a good strategy for boosting email open rates.
3. Use images and other engaging visuals
Adding visuals to the emails you send will make them visually appealing. You can do this by incorporating high-quality images, videos, and GIFs.
By adding engaging elements, your message is quickly and effectively conveyed, which grabs customer attention and increases the chances of a high number of clicks.
4. Optimize your email design
If you want your emails to have a high CTR, your design should be on point. Recipients often scan their inboxes and abandon emails that don’t offer value.
Therefore, your email design should be able to grab user attention, be visually pleasing, and be on brand. Try as much as possible to organize your email layout with user experience in mind.
You can do this by leaving ample white space and using clear fonts and colors consistent with your brand. In addition, make the most important elements, such as visual and written elements, stand out to make it easy for readers to consume the content.
5. Segment your audience
Audience segmentation can improve engagement and click rates by making your emails more relevant. Segmentation is the process of dividing a large audience into smaller audiences with similar characteristics or needs.
You can separate audiences into different segments based on purchase history, age, location, interests, or engagement level so that you can send them content that is likely to resonate with them.
6. Create clear and strong CTAs
Make your call-to-action clear, compelling, and prominent. Use actionable language that motivates email readers on what steps to take next.
Examples of action-oriented phrases to use in your CTA include “Download Now,” “Sign Up Today,” “Join Us,” and “Discover Now”. These phrases can be able to spark immediate responses as well as set expectations when they click on the email.
Making your CTA button pop with bright and inviting colors and ensuring they are easy to click on both mobile and desktop devices will also raise the chances of boosting your email click-through rate.
7. A/B test your emails
Sending two variants of a marketing copy to a portion of subscribers in your email list to see which version brings the best results is what’s called A/B testing. You can test different email elements against each other, such as email copy, text links, subject lines, call-to-action phrases, and visuals. Use the results to optimize your email for optimal performance.
One of the best practices when A or B testing is to not test more than one element simultaneously because you may not know which element brought the better results. Therefore, split testing one element at a time is advised.
8. Optimize for mobile devices
Mobile optimization is another way to boost your emails and get more clicks. According to a study, 1.7 billion people use their mobile phones to access email content, a figure even higher than that of desktop users, at 0.9 billion. Therefore, it makes sense to make your emails mobile-friendly.
You can make your emails easily accessible to mobile users by using a responsive design that responds to different screen sizes. Additionally, make sure that you use buttons and links that are clickable on smaller screens.
9. Track and analyze performance
Regularly monitor your emails and see their performance using email marketing metrics such as open rate, click-to-open rate, bounce rate, and social shares. You can also use Google Analytics to find data about your email performance. Identify the best-performing emails or those with a higher click-through rate and see their common characteristics.
The insights you gain should help you know what works and what doesn’t so that you can implement the right strategies in your next email campaigns.
Conclusion
In summary, email click-through rate is a critical email marketing KPI that should not be overlooked. Email marketers should ensure that email ads are properly designed and well-written to increase the likelihood of clicking through the links inside.
If you are unhappy with your email CTR, use the tips in this guide to boost your email performance. Last but not least, browse the Alibaba.com Reads website to find the latest ecommerce news and insights.
