“To CTR or To CTOR” – The Quest of Success in Email Marketing Campaigns

As an email marketer, I am sure you track the performance metrics that define the success of your email marketing campaigns. The usual performance metrics tracked are deliverability, open rates, and CTR, while a certain metric such as CTOR is neglected.

• CTR, or click-through rate measures the link clicks among all the email recipients.
• CTOR, or click to open rate, measures the number of link clicks among the open emails.

CTOR enables you to track the percentage of link clicks in open emails. So a low CTR does not necessarily mean that your campaign has failed. But, not being able to differentiate between the two often prompts confusion among marketers, resulting in them ignoring the parameter altogether. CTOR is a unique parameter that provides deeper insights into your audience engagement. It helps you to realize the real-time impact of your campaigns by adding more value to the existing KPIs.

The performance metrics of your email campaigns deliver a multitude of insights regarding customers’ behavior. For example, a healthy open rate indicates a compelling subject line and preheader, while CTR shows the audience’s interest in your emails. CTR is a validation of the responsiveness of an email list. It helps understand the hygiene of the email list or reflects the percentage of subscribers interested in responding to your email. CTR is a vital parameter in understanding the efficiency of your email campaigns. 

What does a healthy CTOR signify and what is its relation to CTR in email marketing campaigns?

CTOR, however, provides a deeper insight into your audience. It helps you analyze the effectiveness of the particular email in terms of design, content, CTA, or link placements. It also allows you to gauge whether your email is relevant or not. In other words, CTOR helps you understand the interest and intent of the audience towards your email.  

Let’s say that one of your email campaigns has a high open-rate but low CTOR. This signifies the compelling nature of the subject line, resulting in the email opening. However, if the same campaign has a low CTOR, it indicates a lack of audience interest in the campaign. They are interested in your brand, but not the particular product included in the email.

Once you have this insight, you can design the next campaign that most of your audience would want to check out. Measuring the CTOR can subsequently help you sort the issues with audience selection, content design, relevance, and more. 

Improving CTOR the right way 

Both CTR and CTOR are vital email marketing campaign analysis parameters. Yet, several factors disrupt the overall efficiency of the campaigns, lowering the CTR and CTOR. Identifying and optimizing these obstructions are crucial to delivering successful email campaigns.   

One of the reasons that affect email campaigns is the design and layout. Emails are accessed by your audience today on multiple devices. A responsive design, constantly adapting to the various screen sizes, keeps the email campaign consistent in terms of design and layout. Responsive designs eliminate the need for reformatting the entire email layout every time it is opened on a different device. Using mobile-friendly external links can further deliver a positive experience for customers. 

Despite a fluid design, the inconsistencies in link placement can be an issue that can lower your CTOR. Maintain a consistent and clear CTA for your customers to click. Another mistake is to include multiple links in a single email. Doing so might confuse the audience about the destination of the email. Unless the purpose is clear, there may not be any click on any link at all, resulting in lower CTOR.    

Further, email marketing campaigns’ performance depends on their content. The email header and subject line are vital for addressing the audience’s expectations and increasing the open rates. In addition, the email body, graphics, and any other form of content also impact audience engagement. The content design depends on the audience selection too. According to the product selection, a hyper-segmented audience list improves relevance and engagement faster. A segregated email list on a microscopic level can better address audience interests and preferences.  

Wrapping Up   

Since an email campaign’s success depends eventually on the actions taken by the audience, it is prudent to prioritize both CTR and CTOR simultaneously in an ideal scenario. It helps you accomplish your brand objective much faster without losing out on the email subscribers.