Calculating the Click-through Rate for Your E-Mail Marketing Campaign
Your click-through rate is the number of unique individuals who click one or more links in your marketing e-mail expressed as a percentage of total tracked opens. Links could include
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Web links that point to web pages such as links to your website.
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Social links that point to social media actions, such as when someone Likes your e-mail content:
E-mail marketing programs (EMPs) calculate the click-through rate by taking the total number of unique individuals who click a link in your e-mail and dividing by the total number of tracked opens. To do it on your own, use these steps:
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Subtract any multiple clicks attributed to a single subscriber from the total number of clicks on all links to get total unique clicks.
For example, if your e-mail contains one link and ten people clicked the link twice, subtract ten from the total number of clicks.
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Divide the total number of tracked opens by the total number of unique clicks to get clicks per open.
For example, if 30 of your e-mails track as opened and you receive 3 unique clicks, your e-mail received 0.1 clicks per open.
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Multiply clicks per open by 100 to get the click-through rate.
For example, the click-through rate for 0.1 clicks per open is 10 percent.
Because clicking a link in your e-mail causes the e-mail to track as an open, your click-through rate never exceeds the number of tracked opens. Your e-mail may receive more total clicks than tracked opens, however, because some people click a single link multiple times or click more than one link in your e-mail.
Even if your audience clicks multiple times, your click-through rate represents only the number of unique individuals who click one or more links. Most e-mail tracking reports also allow you to view the total number of clicks attributed to each unique individual as well as showing you exactly which links are clicked. Average click-through rates vary widely by industry.
