Click-Through Rate for Emails: The Complete Guide
Open rate tells you whether someone saw your email. Click-through rate tells you whether they cared enough to act on it. If open rate is the front door, CTR is the handshake — it's where real engagement begins.
A high open rate paired with a low click-through rate means your subject lines are pulling people in but your content isn't holding up its end of the deal. Understanding CTR and how to improve it is essential for anyone sending emails at scale.
What Is Email Click-Through Rate?
Click-through rate (CTR) measures the percentage of email recipients who clicked on at least one link in your email. There are two common ways to calculate it:
CTR (of delivered) = (Unique Clicks / Delivered Emails) x 100
CTOR (Click-to-Open Rate) = (Unique Clicks / Unique Opens) x 100
The first formula gives you CTR relative to everyone who received the email. The second — click-to-open rate (CTOR) — measures clicks relative to people who actually opened it. CTOR is generally more useful because it isolates the quality of your email content from the effectiveness of your subject line.
If 1,000 emails were delivered, 300 were opened, and 45 people clicked, your CTR is 4.5% and your CTOR is 15%.
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate?
Like open rates, CTR benchmarks vary by industry and email type. Here are rough ranges for overall CTR (clicks / delivered):
- SaaS / Technology: 2-5%
- E-commerce: 1-3%
- Media / Publishing: 3-6%
- Professional Services: 2-4%
- Transactional emails: 10-20%
If these numbers seem low, remember that most marketing emails contain multiple links. A 3% CTR on a newsletter sent to 10,000 people means 300 clicks — that's significant traffic.
CTOR benchmarks run higher, typically 10-20% for marketing emails and 30-50% for triggered emails and automations.
Why CTR Matters More Than Open Rate
Open rate is increasingly noisy due to Apple MPP, image blocking, and security scanners. CTR is much harder to fake. A click requires deliberate action from a real person — they had to read your email, find a link interesting, and actively click it.
CTR is also directly tied to business outcomes. Clicks drive website visits, product signups, purchases, and content consumption. Open rate drives... the knowledge that someone maybe saw your email.
With Mailpulse, you can track not just overall CTR but clicks per link. This lets you see exactly which content resonated and which calls-to-action actually performed.
How to Improve Your Click-Through Rate
1. Single Clear Call-to-Action
Emails with one primary CTA consistently outperform emails with multiple competing actions. When you give someone three different things to click, they often click none of them. Decision paralysis is real.
That doesn't mean you can only have one link in your email. It means you should have one obvious primary action, visually distinguished from secondary links. Your main CTA should be a button, not a text link. It should stand out in color and size.
2. Put the Key Link Above the Fold
Many recipients scan emails without scrolling. If your most important link is buried at the bottom, a significant portion of your audience will never see it.
Place your primary CTA within the first 300 pixels of the email. If you need supporting content above it, keep it concise. Get to the point and give people a reason to click early.
3. Write Action-Oriented Link Text
Compare these two CTAs:
- "Click here" — vague, doesn't tell the reader what happens next
- "Download the free report" — specific, tells them exactly what they'll get
The best CTA text tells the reader what they'll get or what will happen when they click. Verbs like "Download," "Start," "Get," "View," and "Join" all outperform passive language.
4. Personalize the Content
Generic emails get generic engagement. If you know something about your recipients — their industry, their role, their past behavior — use it. An email that references a specific product someone viewed on your site will generate more clicks than a generic product roundup.
This ties back to segmentation. The more relevant the content, the higher the CTR.
5. Create a Sense of Relevance, Not Urgency
Fake urgency ("Last chance!!! Offer expires in 2 HOURS!!!") is transparent and erodes trust. Real relevance is different. If someone signed up for a webinar and you send them the recording the next day, that's genuinely timely and relevant. They'll click.
Connect your email to something the recipient actually cares about right now. That's more powerful than any countdown timer.
6. Optimize for Mobile
Depending on your audience, 40-70% of email opens happen on mobile devices. If your email renders poorly on a phone — tiny text, side-scrolling layouts, links too close together — your CTR will suffer.
Use a single-column layout. Make buttons at least 44px tall (Apple's recommended touch target size). Keep paragraphs short. Test on actual devices before sending. Mailpulse analytics shows you the device breakdown of your audience so you know exactly how much of your traffic is mobile.
7. Test and Iterate
A/B testing is the only reliable way to know what works for your specific audience. Test one variable at a time:
- CTA button color
- CTA text
- CTA placement (above fold vs. below)
- Email length (short vs. long)
- Number of links
- Image vs. no image
Run each test across enough emails to get statistically significant results. With Mailpulse, you can create separate campaigns for each variant and compare click rates directly in the dashboard.
Analyzing Click Data Effectively
Raw CTR is a starting point, but the real insights come from looking deeper:
Click Maps
Which links are getting the most clicks? If your header link gets 60% of all clicks and your footer link gets 2%, that tells you about reading patterns and content interest. Mailpulse's top links feature shows you exactly this breakdown.
Time to Click
How long after opening does someone click? If most clicks happen within the first minute, your content is immediately compelling. If clicks are spread over hours, people are saving your email and coming back to it — that's a different kind of engagement worth understanding.
Repeat Clicks
Some recipients will click the same link multiple times. This could indicate high interest (they keep going back to your product page) or it could indicate a confusing landing page (they're not finding what they need). Context matters.
CTR in the Bigger Picture
Click-through rate doesn't exist in isolation. It's one piece of the full set of email metrics you should track. A complete picture includes open rate, CTR, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, and conversion rate.
The most effective email senders look at CTR alongside downstream metrics. A 10% CTR means nothing if those clicks don't lead to conversions. Connect your email tracking data with your website analytics to see the full funnel.
Ready to start tracking clicks in your emails? Mailpulse automatically tracks every link without any manual setup. Just pass your email HTML through the tracker and every link is instrumented. Plans start free at 3,000 emails per month.
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