Getting the Best Click-Through Rate from Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Written by: Lyris HQ Staff Writer

Getting the best out of an email marketing campaign is a constant challenge for email marketers. Oftentimes, the factors that can impact the click-through rate (CTR) are not clear and this can cause confusion. This article is about reviewing and calculating the average click-through rate of email marketing campaigns. It provides benchmarks for determining the success of a campaign and suggests ways and strategies that could help you maximize performance.

One of the most commonly asked questions is whether there is an average email click-through rate. Many marketers look for industry standard click-through rates or ranges to help them benchmark the performance of their upcoming email marketing campaigns. This is because most marketers recognize the importance of the email click-through rate (CTR) in getting conversions.

Unfortunately, there no single rule that applies to all email marketing campaigns. The click-through rate of an email campaign is determined by a number of factors:

• The target audience: The email CTR you can expect from a business audience will be considerably different from the average email click-through rate achieved by an email campaign targeted at consumers.
• The messaging: Special offers, promotions and discounts work differently from articles. An HTML email with visuals will have a different impact than a text email.
• Relevance: If the messaging of your mail is highly relevant to your target audience, it is most likely to result in better CTRs.
• Frequency: Striking the right balance in the frequency of your emails is important.
• Links: Every link in an email is an opportunity to get a click-through. The number of links you include in your email plays a role in the email CTR you get.
• Content: If the email contains articles, the email CTR will vary between emails that contain the entire article in the email body and emails that provide a synopsis requiring the reader to click through to read the full article on the Web site.
• Other factors: The email opt-in process you adopt, the level of personalization, the way you segment your email list and many other factors play a role in determining the average email click-through rate and the success of the campaign.

The way CTR is calculated varies from company to company. Some companies calculate total email CTRs. In this method, if a subscriber clicks on two links within the same email, both the clicks are counted. Other companies calculate unique CTRs. In this method, only one click is counted even if a subscriber clicks on many links within an email. As compared to unique clicks, the total clicks can sometimes be twice in number or more.

However, if you have a permission-based in-house list of subscribers, the ranges given below can provide a general industry standard. The email CTRs mentioned below are calculated as unique clicks divided by the number of delivered emails:

• For business to business (B2B) email newsletters, click-through rates can range from 5% to 15%. If your email newsletters consistently achieve CTRs that are lower than this, then the low CTR could be due to having the all the content within the body of the email, having content of little or no value to the subscribers of your email newsletters, not having enough links to click through, or the most important; not providing the subscribers enough reasons to click-through and visit your Web site.
• For business to consumer (B2C) and promotional email marketing campaigns, a 2% to 12% CTR is considered healthy. If your email campaign consistently gets lower than 2% CTR, you could be over mailing or may want to review your email opt-in processes.
• For both B2C and B2B email campaigns, well segmented and highly personalized email lists often return CRTs ranging from 10% to 20%.
• If the email message is strong in content, it can return a 10% to 15% click-through rate, even if it is being sent to an un-segmented list (as in the case of news or trend-type e-newsletters).
• Trigger Campaigns: If your emails are sent to users based on their behavior, like their pattern of clicking on product links or of visiting certain Web page, etc., then such email campaigns normally return CTRs in the 15% to 50% range.

Factors causing low Email CTRs

If your email marketing campaigns normally return click-through rates of less than 2%-3%, then you need to assess the causes for the low email CTRs. This may include:

• The Opt-in Process: The opt-in process or the process of securing permission from subscribers for sending emails. Some of the poor practices in the opt-in process include: having pre-checked boxes instead of unchecked boxes that users can check to opt-in, being unclear or too generic about the type of emails that will be sent, automatically including someone in the email marketing list when they sign up for some other service like a membership or the download of a whitepaper, etc..
• Subject Lines: Email subject lines that are not action oriented, are written poorly, or do not provide enough motivation for the recipients to either open the mail or take action normally result in a poor click-through rate.
• Email Open Rates: If your emails are not opened and read by a large percentage of the recipients, the chances of the subscribers clicking on a link in the mail are considerably reduced.
• Design and Layout: It is important to guide an email reader to action. If the subscriber cannot find where to click, or if the email design fails to induce a click, then the email is more likely to fail and return a poor click-through rate.
• Links: For an email to return high CTRs, the more links the better. If the email reader keeps encountering text and graphic links, they are more likely to click on some of the links they find. Improving the opportunity to click normally results in a better click-through rate, much like good signage that results in better opportunity to spot a sale in a retail store.
• Email Delivery Rates: If a large percentage of your emails land up in the junk mail or get blocked, it will adversely affect your average email CTR.
• Reason to click: If email newsletters provide complete articles, then there will not be any reason to click on a link and visit the Web site. You have already provided them with all the information they need. In the case of promotional email, the absence of a deadline on an offer, not having a discount and not communicating a tangible limit on the supply results in lack of action. You need to build an urgency to induce action. The better the value proposition offered by the email, the higher the average click-through rate.

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