What is Click to Open?
When it comes to email marketing, the marketer’s primary goal is that the potential customer not only opens the email but reads through it entirely and then decides to engage with the business.
Now don’t be fooled; this doesn’t happen all that easily. The email’s subject line does the trick here. A concise subject line with a striking copy will surely get the reader’s attention, pulling them in to click through and open the email.
So how can you measure the success of your email campaigns? One important metric that can give you an insight into whether your email’s content is on point is the Click to Open Rate (CTOR).
Click to Open Rate lets you know what percentage of those who opened your email found the content relevant and interesting enough to click on it.
For years now, emails are known to be the king of marketing and for all good reasons. As an online seller, shooting out an email to your customer could help you a great deal!
With an average Click to Open Rate in the mid 30% range, it is said that 4.24% of visitors from an online store’s email marketing campaign goes on to make a purchase. That's pretty neat, don’t you think?
How to calculate the click to open rate for your ecommerce business?
The CTOR is calculated by taking the total number of unique clicks that your email has received and divided it by the total number of unique opens. You then have to multiply the result by 100 to arrive at a percentage.
Check out the formula that you need to calculate the click to open rate:
CTOR = Unique Clicks ÷ Unique Opens x 100
Let’s get to the bottom of this with a simple example:
An email campaign is sent out to 1000 subscribers, and 250 of them open the email and see the content. Fifty readers find the content interesting enough and decide to click on the link shown in your email. Your CTOR here is 20%.
A good CTOR ranges anywhere between 20-30% depending on the industry you are in and your email marketing campaign’s goal.
Why should Click to Open Rate matter to your online business?
Now that we know what the click-to-open rate is and how it’s calculated, let’s look at why it’s an essential metric that ecommerce sellers need to be tracking.
CTOR is a metric that, unlike other metrics, considers the number of email opens and the actions performed by the customers after that. The clicks on your email link are from people who have seen the content.
Calculating CTOR helps you understand your online store’s quality of email and gives you a quick insight into your campaign’s overall health. Here’s what CTOR tells you:
- If the content is relevant
- If the design and layout are appealing
- If it connects with your audience
- If it leads a customer to click on a CTA
- The level of engagement with your customers
- How you can better your content decisions
- Which campaigns are performing well and which are not.
- The customer behavior and reaction to the marketing content
Email marketing campaigns are among the most critical methods that online ventures rely on to reach out to potential customers. Still, without monitoring the performance parameters such as the click to open rate, it’s hard to tell if you successfully strike the right chord with your audience.
How to improve the Click to Open Rate for your ecommerce store?
Here are a few tips to improve your click to open rate.
1. Follow through on your subject line’s promise: CTOR is all about getting your customers to click on your link after they have opened the email. A great subject line gives you a good start, but it’s essential to follow through on its promise. For that, you would need a fair offer and an excellent copy.
2. Give your customers what they have signed up for: Your subscribers are on your list for a reason - give them what they want, solve their problem, deliver on the brand’s promise.
3. Keep it short and straightforward: Your readers may not have all the time to read through an entire email. It’s important to value their time and keep the content concise. Structure your email well; make sure the most important information appears first.
While you’re working on improving your CTOR, you may also want to check up on how good you’re fairing in customer support.
Need help with it? No problem, just sign up on DelightChat and turn your customers into fans with the best ecommerce helpdesk out there.
