What CTOR Can Tell You That Click Rates Won’t
Invariably, when I’m talking about click rates in emails, I’m always looking into the click through to open rate (CTOR). Many email service providers will give you the unique click rate per email campaign and this number is simply a percent of clicks divided into sends. So why does this email marketing expert opt for the CTOR?
Before I answer this, I digress. (And this example is one I’ve told my clients.)
Suppose you get an email campaign from a car rental service company that you used on your last trip abroad. You might open it just to have a glimpse at the various locations that they are trying to get you to visit. Do you click? Nope, you catch yourself just before doing so. Just doesn’t pass the muster.
The next case also involves getting a link to click, but instead of an email, the medium is WhatsApp or perhaps Facebook. Either way, your best friend sends you a link of something silly that’s gone viral—remember that sneezing panda bear? Not laughing? No worries, then insert the last applicable meme your pal sent you. I bet that you clicked on it.
Why? Well, there are two reasons. One, you thought it would make you laugh; two, because your friend sent it. Plain and simple. And if you have time, you’ll click 90 percent of the time of the stuff they send you.
The Power of Engagement Rests in CTOR
That is the power of engagement and coming back to CTOR, that’s what I’m looking for. When I’m wearing my marketing automation hat, I am looking not just for an open, but also engagement. Ask yourself: how can you get your audience to react to you like someone near and dear.
And as a rule of engagement, you always want to understand if your emails are resonating with your audience. The most efficient way to do this is to “poll the people” who see your email and you have the power to survey without asking direct questions. You are basically asking them to react. Therefore, if they don’t open your email, then it would be futile to see their reaction.
So as a rule of thumb you can only gauge this from people that open your emails.
At the same time, marketers should be aware that modern privacy protections have changed how open rate data should be interpreted. Features such as Apple Mail Privacy Protection and automated security scans can artificially inflate open metrics, making them less precise than they once were. Because of this, many email marketers now analyze engagement using a combination of signals such as click-through rates, conversions, and on-site behavior. Increasingly, AI-driven analytics tools are helping marketers connect these signals to better understand how subscribers truly interact with their campaigns.
To effectively harness the power of engagement and optimize your CTOR, it’s crucial to use a comprehensive email marketing platform. ActiveCampaign stands out in this regard, offering advanced features such as behavioral automation, segmentation, and personalized content delivery. These tools help you engage your audience more effectively, ensuring your emails resonate and drive the desired actions. By leveraging ActiveCampaign, you can transform your email marketing strategy, making it more targeted and impactful.
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Now the truth of the matter is, many times you will see the unique click rate and the click through to open rate have some sort of correlation, but as data diggers, you should be looking for patterns and outliers. The biggest outlier would be a low open rate with a high CTOR. If that’s the case and you were analyzing the click rate as a function of the unique clicks and the sent, then you would be missing the point as the click rate would just blend in with the crowd.
Case in point:
In the two scenarios above, version B is by far a better email campaign despite its meager open rate. And if you were to just analyze the unique click rate you would miss this—obviously you won’t miss it here but if you are analyzing hundreds of campaigns in an Excel report you probably will.
That is why I opt for the CTOR. And once you have that figured out, it’s time to work upstream and solve the issue of the low open rate, because wouldn’t it be great to optimize your campaign and having it shine on all fronts!
All this can be discovered with a professional email marketing audit. More on that, in this blog post.
Working with brands spending $50k–$500k/month on paid media. I bring 20+ years of experience, $10M+ in managed ad spend, and 10,000+ hours in email to every engagement.
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