This article reviews how to calculate and interpret the average click-through rate (CTR) of an email campaign, provides general industry benchmarks, and suggests strategies to improve underperformance.
Question: Is there an average email click-through rate? Or ranges to judge whether response was poor, average or good?
Answer. The email click-through rate (CTR) is important because without it, you don't get conversions. However, there's no single benchmark click-through rate, because CTRs depend on many factors: whether you send to a business or consumer audience, the kind of email messages you send, how relevant the message is to your audience, how often you send, your email opt-in process, your use of personalization and email list segmentation, and dozens of other factors. And most significantly, how many links you have in your email and if you are providing content such as articles, whether you include the entire article within the body of the email or you have a teaser or snippet that requires email subscribers to click through to a Web site to read.
Beyond that, many companies calculate and report email click through rates differently - using total versus unique clicks. Many email subscribers will click on multiple links, which means that CTRs based on "total" clicks are typically about two times higher than those based on "unique" clicks.
That being said, below are some ranges for average email click through rates for permission-based house lists. CTRs that we cite are based on unique clicks (only one click per person is counted) and are calculated as: unique clicks/emails delivered:
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B2B email newsletters typically range from 5% to 15%. If your CTRs are consistently below that level then among other things, you are probably providing content of little value to your email subscribers. Or you may have most of the content within your email, not giving subscribers a reason or means to click-through to your Web site.
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B2C promotional email marketing campaigns often range from about 2% to 12%. Email campaigns with less than a 2% CTR may be a result of over mailing and questionable email opt-in processes.
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Highly segmented and personalized email lists (B2B and B2C) are often in the 10% to 20% CTR range. Also, email messages with very strong content but sent to unsegmented lists, like many news or trend-type e-newsletters, are often in the 10%-15% range.
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Trigger or behavior-based email campaigns (emails that are sent to recipients based on some behavior they showed, such as clicking on a product link, visiting a specific Web page, etc.) are often in the 15% to 50% range.
If your email marketing campaigns are typically showing under 2-3% CTRs, some of the causes likely include:
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Poor permission or opt-in processes. This includes pre-checked boxes, not making it clear what type of email they will be receiving, automatically adding someone to receive your email marketing when they've actually signed up for something else such as a whitepaper, etc.
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Poorly written email subject lines that do not direct and motivate recipients to take an action.
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Poor email delivery rates. If a lot of your email messages are getting blocked or filtered and you don't know it, your CTR will obviously be affected.
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Poor email open rates. If few people open your email, fewer recipients have a chance to click.
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Poor email design and layout. If they can't easily find where to click through or aren't motivated to by your layout - you've got trouble in River City.
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Lack of links. Quite simply, the more links the better. Make it so that email readers are continuously stumbling over text and graphic links like they do signage in a retail store.
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No reason to click. If your email newsletter has a single or multiple articles in their entirety, then don't expect them to click. You haven't given them any reason. If you are sending a promotional email and you don't include a deadline for the offer, or convey a discount, special offer, limited supply, etc., few people are probably going to take action.