Did you know that there are around four billion daily email users around the world? This number alone shows us why emails continue to be one of the most used marketing methods to reach target customers.
An effective and engaging email marketing campaign is a great way to expand your reach and deliver targeted and personalized messages — all while keeping your costs down.
However, there are still some challenges in email marketing. Today, marketing agencies face neither email deliverability nor email open rates issues. The biggest challenge you would likely face with your email campaigns revolves around your click-through rate.
What Are Email Click-Through Rates?
Email click-through rate (CTR) is a common metric for measuring email campaign engagement and success. It refers to the number of recipients who take action after opening and reading the email.
It’s not to be confused with email open rates, which only count the percentage of recipients who open the email, regardless of whether they read through its contents.
The CTR tells you the percentage of people who clicked on one of the links embedded within the marketing email you sent. These links are often paired with a call-to-action that encourages readers to buy your product, visit your website, or maybe sign-up for a program.
A click-through is a good indicator that the recipient read the email message and decided to take intentional action.
How to Calculate Your Email CTR
Calculating your email click-through rate is pretty simple. First, you need to know two important details:
The total number of people who clicked through your email campaign
The total number of emails delivered to your subscribers
The email CTR is calculated by dividing the number of click-throughs by the number of emails delivered. After that, the amount is multiplied by 100.
Take note that the number of emails sent may not always be equal to the number of emails successfully delivered. Some emails may bounce back due to a wrong address or discontinued email.
Thus, the formula for computing email CTR is as follows:
Email CTR = Total number of emails clicked
———————————————— x 100
(Emails sent – Emails bounced or returned)
Let’s say that your email subscriber list has a total of 150 recipients and 30 emails bounced back. If the number of people who clicked on a link in your email is only 40, then the formula would look like this:
Email CTR = 40
———————————————— x 100
(150 – 30)
Based on all these, the total email click-through rate would be 33.3%.
Why You Need to Calculate Your Email CTR
According to survey results from Ascend2, 73% of email marketers’ click-through rates measure the success of their campaigns and consider it the most valuable key performance indicator or metric.
Monitoring your email CTR gives you a better idea of what customers want and what resonates with them. This can help you revise your copy to better suit the preferences of your target audience.
Moreover, by comparing your CTR with industry averages, you can also gauge how well your email campaign is performing.
Average Email CTR Per Industry
Some agencies and businesses still have misconceptions about how well their email CTR performs. Before you lament having an exceptionally low click-through rate, compare it with the industry average first.
According to MailChimp, a popular email marketing service, the average email click-through rate across all industries is only 2.91%. This means if your or your client’s click-through rate is close to that, you’re still relatively safe.
Here are some of the average click-through rates as of January 2022 for various industries, according to survey results from Constant Contact:
- Marketing agencies and other consulting services: 0.96%
- Dining and food services: 0.76%
- Churches and faith-based organizations: 3%
- Insurance, accounting, and other financial services: 0.97%
- Law and legal services: 1.37%
- Real estate businesses: 0.84%
- Technology services: 2.26%
- Travel and tourism services: 1.33%
- Online and physical retail shops: 0.91%
How To Raise Your Email CTR
If you are experiencing low click-through rates, you are not alone. One survey found that 53% or over half of email marketing professionals still experience low email CTR.
There are established companies and even marketing agencies with good advertising strategies yet still see low CTR. It’s possible to get email open rates at around 40% yet have email CTR remain below 10%.
Here are our top tips for agencies to improve your CTR:
- Avoid adding too many links in the email
- Always have a call-to-action
- Experiment with where to place CTAs and links
- Avoid boring or unengaging link texts, such as “click here” or “sign up”
- Ensure eye-friendly color schemes and aesthetically appealing designs
- Optimize email newsletters for mobile-viewing
- Keep the email copy short and direct to the point
In short, optimizing email content and design is one of the best ways to improve email click-through rates.
The Bottomline
If you aren’t keeping track of your email campaign’s CTR performance, now is the time to start doing so. Keeping track of this metric can help you improve not just your lead generation but also your conversions.