High open rates mean little if nobody clicks. Your email click-through rate (CTR), the share of recipients who click a link in your email, depends on what happens after the open: whether the message reaches the inbox, feels relevant, asks for one clear action and arrives at the right moment. Here is how to measure it properly and four steps to improve it.
What Is a Good Email Click-Through Rate?
Benchmarks vary by industry, list and email type, so use them as a rough guide rather than a target. Mailchimp's email marketing benchmarks, last updated in December 2023 and based on campaigns sent to at least 1,000 subscribers, put the average click rate across all users at 2.62% and the average open rate at 35.63%. Mailchimp's table also breaks results down by industry, so compare yourself with your own sector.
Two cautions when reading your own numbers:
- Open rates are less reliable than they used to be. Mailchimp notes that Apple's Mail Privacy Protection can affect the accuracy of open rates, because some opens are recorded automatically. Clicks are a better signal of real interest.
- CTR and conversion rate are different. CTR measures clicks. Conversion rate measures how many people completed the action you wanted, such as a purchase or sign-up.
Track CTR to judge the email itself, and conversion rate to judge the whole journey, including your landing page.
Before You Start: Make Sure You Reach the Inbox
No one clicks an email that lands in spam. Gmail's email sender guidelines ask senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to authenticate with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, support one-click unsubscribe and keep their reported spam rate below 0.30%. Even if you send less, these are good habits. Clean out inactive subscribers regularly, too.
Step 1: Segment Your Audience
Know your target audience before you write a single email. Your list contains people with different needs, and one generic message will not work for all of them. Divide your list into segments and learn what each one wants.
Useful bases for segments include location, purchase history, browsing behavior, lifecycle stage and stated preferences. Once you know a segment, you know what will make it click. Use images where they support the message, and always include descriptive alt text, since many email apps block images by default.
Step 2: Give Each Email One Clear Call to Action
Give each email one objective. A common mistake is asking readers to do several things at once. Use one primary call to action (CTA), repeated if the email is long, because several competing requests often lead to no clicks at all.
Make the CTA a clear button with specific wording, such as "See the spring menu" rather than "Click here", and make sure it is easy to tap on a phone. Write in plain language your audience connects with.
Step 3: Give Readers a Reason to Click Now
Give readers a reason to act: an offer, a piece of content or a piece of news that matches the segment you are emailing. This is why segmentation comes first. Put yourself in your reader's position and ask what would make them click today rather than later. The page they land on should deliver exactly what the email promised, or your conversion rate will suffer even if your CTR is strong.
Step 4: Send at the Right Time and Test
Send emails when your audience is most likely to read them. The right email at the wrong time gets buried under newer messages. Check when your subscribers usually engage, and use your email tool's send-time features if it has them.
Then test. Change one thing at a time, such as the subject line, CTA wording or send time, and compare results. Our guide to A/B testing explains how to run fair tests.
Recap
Get into the inbox, segment your audience, keep one objective per email, make an offer that fits the reader, and send at the right time. Review your clicks after every campaign and adjust. If you are choosing a platform, see our comparison of email marketing tools for small businesses.
