Click To Open Rate: Your Secret Email Marketing Metric
Reading Time: 6 minutesCompared to other types of marketing, email provides the most actionable data. Whenever you send an email, you know exactly who clicked on your links and who didn’t. This means that every campaign you send reveals more about your readers – including what makes them click through (or not) to your site.
Since the early ages of email marketing, everything used to revolve around numbers. But those numbers changed over time. Still, the dilemma which numbers matter more is an existent one.
In this article, we will review what click to open rate (or CTOR) is, the difference between CTR and CTOR, and what makes this metric so impactful on the results of your campaigns.
Contents:
1. What is Click To Open Rate in email marketing?
A click-to-open rate is a way of measuring how interested people are in your emails. These metrics are essential because they tell you if your subject lines are getting recipients to take action on their emails. The metric is relatively new in the email marketing world but is making a quick breakthrough, as it has proven its value over the last couple of years.
2. The difference between CTR and CTOR
Imagine driving two vehicles. Both have 300hp under the hood. Both are pretty fast. Yet, one is faster than the other and, on top of that, consumes less fuel. Which car would you select?
2.1 What is CTR, and how it is measured
The click-through rate is a metric that reflects how likely it is that someone will click on an advertisement in an email – and thus, make way to your site. To calculate, you must divide the number of people who clicked on at least one link in the email message by the number of delivered emails and multiple that ratio by 100, like this: (the number of clicks divided by the number of delivered emails) * 100 = %
For example, the email marketing campaign “20% Autumn Sale” is sent 100,000 times. There are 2,000 clicks. This means CTR is 2%.
3.2 Click to open rate formula
CTR, or click-through rate, is a method of measuring how many people have clicked on a link in an email after it has been sent. Conversely, CTOR only considers those who have opened the email – a much smaller number.
CTOR % = Unique Clicks/Unique Opens multiplied by 100
3. What makes the open rates so vital these days?
Email marketing engages customers, builds loyalty, and increases sales. But even the best-designed emails won’t be successful if they aren’t opened, read, and clicked through to your website. That’s why email deliverability is so important. Deliverability refers to the percentage of messages that reach the inbox without getting bounced or filtered out. Good email marketers maintain high deliverability rates by keeping their lists clean.
Аnd this is just the first step. Emails are a fantastic content marketing tool. But brands can’t rely on mailboxes alone. To ensure that the emails they send have the maximum impact, businesses need to focus on increasing open rates.
4. CTOR – is it really THAT important?
For years, email marketers considered CTR and Open Rates the bread and butter of successful email marketing campaigns, but click-to-open rate brings specifics to the table.
CTOR is a really effective metric because it shows you how many people are opening your newsletter. This is a good thing, but the thing to note here is that if your links, layout, copy, and content aren’t interesting for readers, they won’t open your newsletter. So, in your job as a marketer, it’s best if you focus on those four things instead of obsessing over your click to open score.
5. How to improve your CTOR score?
Is there some secret sauce for a successful CTOR score? I will dare to disagree with anyone claiming that this is “simply magic.”
5.1 Beat your competition with out-of-this-world subject lines
A perfect subject line can make or break an email campaign. It’s the difference between a customer opening your message and deleting it without a second thought or giving it a chance. Subject lines that contain powerful, clear language can increase open rates by up to 200%. They give your customers a clear idea of what they’ll find inside the message, and they make it more likely that recipients will read the body copy.
5.2 Create beautiful designs
Create email designs that stand out from the crowd. Even if your product isn’t the most beautiful or visually attractive, you can still create an elegant and well-designed brand that speaks to your target audience and makes them want to buy.
5.3 Craft engaging email content
Craft engaging email content. Don’t spill too many words. Use simple sentences and focus on what the client can benefit from your brand. Be original and build a connection.
5.4 Master calls to action
You’d be surprised how few businesses take advantage of their call to action buttons. Your CTA should be bright and clear, and you should make it as obvious as possible for visitors to click on it. If your main purpose is to drive traffic to a particular page or a specific product, you can do so with a few simple changes to the CTA text. And a contrasting design will help your customers notice the button instead of going right past them.
Since you’re CTOR is a hybrid between CTR + OR, it will be safe to say that improving those stats will reflect directly on your click to open rate.
6. What is a good click to open rate?
How can you know what a good click to open rate is? It all depends on your industry. If your product is related to fashion or beauty, for example, your email open rate may be higher than that of someone selling business software. On average, however, the click to open rates are 14.1%, according to Campaign Monitor.
It’s hard to say what the perfect CTOR is. For example, for one product or industry, a 16 percent CTOR might be bad. For other products or services, the same 16 percent CTOR could be astounding. It depends on your niche and how much your customers are willing to spend on your product. For example, luxury items usually have a lower click to open rate because only specific clients are willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on them.
This leads to one huge conclusion: to achieve the best outcome, you should segment your audience.
7. Which is better – CTR or CTOR?
Click-through rate is a popular email marketing metric. However, it doesn’t tell you as much as you need to know about your message’s performance. It doesn’t measure the success of your email subject line or preview text, for example – two important ingredients in crafting a great message. Instead, it is focusing on the “big picture.” While the general overview is always a good indicator of the overall performance of each email marketing campaign, it doesn’t tell the whole truth, which makes it partially inefficient.
On the other hand, CTOR is more comprehensive and allows you to see how well your copy and design work together. It is the metric that you can successfully apply to check the quality of your content.
8. Conclusion
Your email marketing strategy will be more effective if you track the CTOR of each campaign. That’s true. But you should also remember that there’s more to running an online business than just getting people to click the “BUY” button – although it’s crucial for business growth, too!
Make sure your emails are actually interesting and add value to the customer’s life beyond the purchasing journey.
9. Mailbakery
We’ve been among the industry leaders since 2008. Our team has helped many companies succeed with outstanding email designs, HTML coding, responsive emails, and third-party integrations. We can’t say we know the “secret formula” of success but deep down we believe that high-quality content will always prevail.