What is an email CTR? How to calculate and improve it

An effective email marketing campaign has the power to build your brand, engage existing and potential customers, and persuade them to take action.

At the very least, email keeps you front and center in the minds of your audience. Because email is one of the more personal touchpoints you can use to build a relationship with your customers, you have a greater chance of making your emails meaningful and successful.

Email marketing has maintained its popularity due to its simplicity, low cost, and effectiveness. According to litmus, four out of five marketers would rather give up social media than email marketing. But how do you measure the success of email marketing campaigns?

One important metric email marketers can use to determine how well their email campaigns are performing is click-through rate (CTR).

Ideally, your email subscribers won’t click on links at random. No, you want them to intentionally take action from your emails.

Maybe you want them to buy your product. Or (if you are a non-profit organization) to donate to your cause. You might want them to sign up for your latest program or simply take a survey so you can learn more about their needs. The point is that almost every email you send contains some sort of call-to-action, which often requires recipients to click a link and go to a website in order to take the desired action.

This action of clicking a link in your email and going elsewhere contributes to your CTR. The same goes for pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, where you pay every time your link is clicked from an ad impression.

CTR formula

Now that you understand what CTR is and why it’s so important to your marketing efforts, how do you actually calculate it?

How to calculate email CTR

For emails, the CTR formula is as follows:

CTR = number of people who clicked on a link / number of emails successfully delivered x 100

Let’s say you sent an email to a list of 110 people and 100 were successfully delivered to their recipients. Of those 100 recipients, 35 clicked on your CTA and were redirected to a new page. Using this data, you would calculate your CTR as follows:

CTR = 35 people clicked a link / 100 emails delivered x 100 = 35%

How to calculate CTR for PPC

Here’s the formula you would use to calculate the CTR of a PPC campaign:

CTR = number of people who clicked the ad / number of ad impressions x 100

If 200 people see your ad and 20 people click on it, this formula will give you a 10% CTR.

What is a good click through rate?

The right CTR for your business depends on your industry, budget, campaign goals, and audience size. Let’s take a look at what the research has to say.

Average CTR

According to MailChimp, the average email click-through rate across industries is 2.91%. Industries with some of the highest CTRs included government (3.99%), media and publishing (4.62%), home and garden (3.03%), and hobbies (5.01%).

When it comes to PPC click rates, the cross-industry average is around 2%.

Improve your click through rate

After calculating your CTR and comparing it to industry standards, you may want to take steps to improve it and create more successful email and PPC campaigns. There’s a slim chance you’ll get customer feedback on your campaigns, which means most of your information comes from testing.

First, take a look at your old email campaigns. Divide them into two categories: those that perform well (relatively high CTR) and those that don’t perform well (relatively low CTR). Take the time to analyze these messages and note any significant differences or patterns.

You want to investigate:

• Ad text: Can it be shorter? more likeable? Easier to understand? Strive to use language that resonates with your audience and may differ from technical jargon.
• Draft: Are your emails visually appealing and inviting? Is it clear what the next step is for the reader to take?
• Call to Action: How clear is your CTA? Experiment with placement and language to see what works for your audience. Also, consider limiting CTAs and links to one or two per email. When too many choices are presented, readers can become overwhelmed or confused.

You also want to enter the minds of your audience. Just because you’ve created an impressive email or ad doesn’t mean it will appeal to the people you want to target.

A good email service provider will offer A/B testing so you can send one variant to one segment of your audience and a second variant to the other segment, and then compare the CTR to see which performed better.

Whether you pay per click or pay very little for a monthly subscription with an email service provider, you still spend time and effort reaching your audience and converting them into customers. You want a return on your investment. You want your marketing efforts to pay off.

Ensuring that your ads and email campaigns are written and designed effectively and are reaching the right audience will help you build and retain the customer base you want. To determine this, you need to become familiar with your current click-through rates and optimize your content to get the best possible result.