Among the many metrics that a great email marketer must keep an eye on, click-through rates are one of the most useful.
In essence, it’s a metric that calculates how many people clicked on a link, image, or CTA in your email. While open rates speak to the quality of your subject line and timing, click-through rates tell a completely different story.
Read on to discover what makes a good click-through rate and what you should do with that number.
What is an ideal click-through rate for email?
As of December 2018, the average click-through rate for email stood at roughly 7%. Therefore, anything higher than that number could be considered a success.
However, this number is averaged across every industry, and each individual industry has its own unique audience, which should be taken into consideration. For instance, click-through rates for the transportation business average in at about 15.5%, while the salon and spa business comes in at just a 3.72% average.
With that in mind, it’s best to compare your average click-through rate with your particular industry, rather than the total average. That way, you’ll get the clearest picture of where your campaign stands and where you might need to change things up.
How to measure your click-through rate
With the help of ESPs (email service providers), you can measure your click-through rates using a few simple steps.
First, take the total amount of link clicks from your email and remove any multiple clicks by the same subscriber, so you end up with unique clicks.
Once you have the unique clicks, simply divide it by the open rate.
To turn that number into a percentage, then multiply it by 100.
Click-through rate example
If you have 246 total clicks on your email, but 150 of those are multiple clicks, that means you have 96 unique views.
Take your 96 unique views and divide it by the open rate, which we’ll say is 400. You end up with .24. Multiply that by 100, which is standard procedure for calculating percentages, and you’ll end up with a 24% click-through rate.
Does it matter?
With this click-through rate information, you’re able to track the subscriber one step further than the open rate. This is where you truly get to test the effectiveness of your email’s content, as opposed to testing the external content of the email, such as the subject line.
Click-through rates are also more specific than other rates, as they relate directly to separate elements of the email, such as hyperlinks, images, or CTAs.
By knowing your click-through rates, you can alter individual elements of the email and experiment with new links to see what works best.
When experimenting with your email’s content, the click-through rate is going to be your most effective tool.
What now?
In the information age, the more you know, the further you’ll go. That’s doubly true for email marketing, which requires you to always be on top of metrics in order to steer the ship one way or the other.
With click-through rates, you can truly get a feel for how your email’s content is engaging or not engaging the reader. Once you have that information, you can remove or add material in response to help you create the best content for your email campaigns.