Make Click-Through Rates Great Again – CTR Calculation Done Right

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CTR calculation is a step that shouldn’t be overlooked in your marketing campaigns. Thankfully, most email autoresponders do this calculation automatically for you.

In the past, email marketing was mainly about sending an email to a list of people and hoping they would open it.

Nowadays, we have detailed reporting systems thanks to the help of email automation tools such as Mailvio.

For example, you might want to know how many recipients have opened your emails, or what percentage of those have actually clicked on your links. 

This particular metric is what is known as click-through rate or CTR.

Email marketers pay a lot of attention to CTR. Why? Because it gives them valuable information about how their messages are being received by their audience.

In this article, we will explain in detail:

  • What is CTR;
  • How to calculate CTR; and
  • How to use it to improve your email marketing campaigns.

What is Email Click-Through Rate (CTR) and How to Calculate It?

Email click-through rate (CTR) measures the success (or failure) of an email sent to your subscriber list.

click through rates calculation

It basically measures the percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in any given email.

As such, email marketers see it as a key indicator of whether their emails are effective at getting people to take action.

If you are getting a high CTR, then your email marketing strategy is probably working well. If not, then you need to make some improvements.

So how to calculate your CTR?

CTR Calculation Formula

The CTR calculation formula is pretty simple.

Just divide the number of total clicks (or unique clicks) on a link in an email by the number of delivered emails and multiply that number by 100.

CTR calculation example: 100 clicks ÷ 5,000 delivered emails * 100 = 2% click through rate.

The Importance of CTR in Email Marketing

Click-through rates can be a great indicator of whether a specific email campaign is effective or not.

In particular, email marketers use CTR calculation to gauge audience engagement.

In other words, they use it to determine what kind of emails are the most effective at getting clicks.

Monitoring your CTRs will give you valuable information about how people are interacting with your emails.

You can do that for free via Google Analytics or with a specialist email marketing tool like Mailvio.

mailvio home page

Regardless of how you do it, this information will help you to make any necessary changes to your messages to ensure you get better results.

For example, if you notice a decrease in your CTRs, the next step would be to figure out what caused that decrease.

You may find that the content in your emails is not as effective as it should be.

Or maybe there is some technical problem that is preventing your emails from being read. Or perhaps your emails aren’t making it to the right people.

You would have to inspect your emails, test them, and preview them to identify any possible issues. You can also try split-testing your content. 

Send different versions of your email then analyze what features of each email work and which don’t. 

What impacts your CTR?

There are many factors that can affect the CTR of your emails, for better or for worse. 

 The following three (3) areas can have a major impact on your CTR:

  1. The Email Subject Line
  2. The Call to Action
  3. The Content

The Subject Line

The first and most important factor that affects the CTR of your emails is your subject line.

importance of email subject lines

The subject line is probably the most important element of any email. It has a huge impact on the click-through rate because it determines whether or not people open your emails. 

If only a few people open your emails your click-through rates will be low and vice-versa.

So you have to be critical in composing your subject lines. And it goes for every type of email you are writing. Be it a:

The more connected, intrigued, and emotional people feel about your emails, the higher the chance of them being opened. 

It’s also a good idea to split different subject lines to see which performs best. 

Lastly, using emojis in email subject lines is now a popular business trend. Emojis add emotions and help your emails stand out in a crowded inbox. 

The Call to Action

call to action

The second area that can have a major impact on your CTR rate is the call-to-action (CTA).

Think of the CTA as the “Get more information!” link, “Order now!” button, or “Buy this book!” button in your email.

 There are four ways that you can use the CTA to get more clicks:

  • Make it simple and clear
  • Include a strong benefit
  • Include a sense of urgency
  • Make it visible and prominent
improve your click through rates

Use Clear And Simple Calls To Action

The first thing to remember about your CTA is that if people don’t understand what you want them to do, then they won’t click through. 

Ensure that your call to action is simple and clear. This means that you shouldn’t include any special characters or jargon in your CTA. 

If it is confusing or unclear, people will be less likely to click through. 

When asking for someone’s name and email address, a simple, “Click here to sign up” is usually good enough.

If you’re asking them to make a purchase, you might want to use something like:

“Order today and get 25% off!” or simply;

“Buy Now”

Including A Strong Benefit

The next thing to remember about your CTA is that it should have a strong benefit. 

This means that you need to provide something of value to the reader. People will only click through if they can see why it is worth their time. 

So think about what value the reader is getting from your content. 

Will they learn something new? Will they save money? Are they going to make more money? 

It’s important to focus on what benefit the reader gets out of clicking through.

Then make sure that your CTA clearly communicates that value. For example, “Save 10% off your order today.” or:

“Increase your sales by 30% with our 3-step system”

You can also use social proof to encourage people to take action: “Join over 7,000 other happy customers!” 

Conveying Urgency

Adding urgency to your subject line, email body, and calls to action will help boost your click-through rates. 

This could be in the form of an expiration date, an “offer ends” notice, or some other deadline. Make sure to also include this information in the subject line. 

And then make sure that your CTA is visible and that it stands out from the rest of your email. 

So think about how you can place your CTA so that it is easily noticeable. It can be placed at the top of the email body, in a headline, in a subheading, in a tagline, or in a button.

You can also use text-based calls to action like: “Sign up now!” or “Buy now!” 

If your reader doesn’t click through right away, you can still track their behavior to see what they did instead of clicking through.

The Content 

The last element of the email marketing process that can have a major impact on the CTR of your emails is the content.  

Think of the content as the main part of the email. 

It is where you want people to spend the most time when they read it. 

The quality of your email content will determine how many people feel inspired to take action. 

Your email body should be congruent with your subject lines. In other words, if your subject lines focus on urgency, so should your email body. 

Your email content must also be:

  • Interesting;
  • Helpful; and
  • Relevant to your target audience.

The latter is especially important. The more relevant and beneficial your content is, the more engaging your audience will be. This is where good list management skills come into play. 

List segmentation, list cleaning, and management of inactive subscribers are critical aspects of email marketing. Without these skills, you’ll have high email bounce rates and you’ll end up falling for spam traps

Four (4) Easy Tips to Increase Your Email CTRs

You don’t have to wait for your CTRs to hit rock bottom to start taking action. There are some things you can do right away to increase your CTRs. 

ctr calculation - increase your ctr

Use Captivating Images In Your Emails

People tend to spend more time looking at images than reading text. So including captivating images may help to drive up your click-through rates. 

Make sure that your images are high quality. This means that they should be sharp and clear, have a good contrast ratio, be in focus, and have a high resolution. 

And of course, they should be relevant to the content of your emails. Random images won’t do regardless of how great they look. There are many platforms you can download high-quality images from for free. These include Pexels and Pixabay

Additionally, you can include GIFs in email campaigns. GIFS add movement to otherwise static images to which people’s eyes will be drawn to. 

Try split-testing campaigns with images/Gifs against those without. From there, your CTR calculation will tell you what works best for your audience. 

Optimize Your Emails For Mobile Devices

Nearly 50% of all emails are read on mobile devices. So it only makes sense to optimize your content for mobile devices. Otherwise, you’ll be leaving half your money on the table from the very start. 

email open rates on mobile

Ensure that your email templates are mobile optimized and preview your emails before sending them. Do this to ensure your emails look good on all device types before sending. 

You also want to ensure that all of your email content shows up the way you intend before sending it. 

Again, you’ll need to use a robust email autoresponder such as Mailvio to optimize your content for mobile. 

The more mobile-optimized your emails are the better your CTR calculation results will be.

Add Personalization

email personalization

Along with making your emails relevant, you should consider adding a touch of personalization as well. 

People can easily pick up generic content. And if they feel as if your emails were blasted to everyone they will not be appreciative of them. 

But, through the use of personalization, you can speak to each of your subscribers on an individual level.

Email personalization is one of the most effective ways to increase your click-through rates. 

In fact, research has shown a whopping 139% increase in click-through rate for personalized emails. 

And don’t think personalization means just using your recipients’ names. It goes much deeper than that. Personalization may also include:

email personalization demographics
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Birthday
  • Relationship Status
  • Hobbies
  • Recent Purchase Information

Sometimes it’s not possible to collect all of this information from your audience with an optin page. So you’ll have to learn from your audience. You also need to be specific about your targeting when generating leads. 

Where are your leads coming from? Facebook? Yes? Well, “Facebook” is now a point of personalization you can use as well. 

Also, note that the more specific you are about your targeting the more responsive your email lists will be. 

The last thing to consider is how to incorporate these points of personalization into your emails. Well, if you only have a small number of subscribers,10 or fewer, you can add them by hand. Simply send individual emails to each subscriber. 

But if you have many subscribers it will be labor-intensive to craft your emails individually. You’ll need to automate the process. That’s the whole purpose of an email autoresponder

With a good autoresponder, you’ll only ever need to write one single email, adding relevant tags of personalization. 

For example, the tag %First Name% in Mailvio fills in the name of your recipients individually. So even if you have 10,000 subscribers, every single one of them will be addressed by their first name. 

Resending Emails

resending emails

Resending emails is another great way to get better click-through rates. 

A lot of times your emails may need to be resent. This is especially true in cases where your open rates are low. 

You can troubleshoot your campaigns’ poor performance, make necessary changes, then resend your campaigns. 

Sometimes making simple changes to your email subject lines or call to action can boost your CTR impressively. 

Conclusion

Your clickthrough is an important metric to know how well your email campaigns are performing. CTR calculation makes it easy to understand what’s working and what isn’t. 

Even if you have high open rates your conversions will still be low if no one clicks on your links. So this is something you’ll definitely want to work on. 

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to improve your click-through rates so that your ctr calculation will be something to look forward to. You can include captivating images and GIFs in your emails. Optimize your content for mobile and send more relevant personalized content. 

Of course, the more relevant your emails are the more engaged your audience will be. 

And be sure to split-test different email strategies to see what your audience responds to best. 

Lastly, if you have suggestions on how to increase your CTR share them in the comments section below.

Until next time, 

Cheers to your success. 

4 Comments on “Make Click-Through Rates Great Again – CTR Calculation Done Right”

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