Have you ever given a thought about these questions:
- What is a good CTR for a newsletter?
- What does CTR mean?
- How can I improve the CTR of my newsletter?
- What CTR can be considered successful email marketing?
We hear these questions almost daily from customers and prospects as well as from new users of our LianaMailer newsletter tool. There is no universally valid answer to all the above-mentioned questions, but in this article, we will tell you what the click-through rate (CTR) means in email marketing and how you can improve the click-through rates of your newsletters.
What does the newsletter opening rate look like in the world?
Before delving into the questions, let's take a look at what the open rate of email marketing looks like in the world. In our State of Email Marketing 2021 study we analyzed more than a billion newsletters sent with LianaMailer. The email campaigns were sent by LianaMailer's customers from Europe, the Middle East, and Hong Kong. The analysis includes a wide range of industries such as the automotive industry, education, media, and publishing, as well as the public sector and organizations.
However, more important than staring at other people's numbers is to focus on improving your own numbers as an email marketer. The excellence of email marketing as a marketing channel lies in the fact that information related to marketing effectiveness is available and can be accurately measured. In addition to the opening and the click rate of the newsletter, the analysis allows you to access clicks at the individual level, and you can examine the effectiveness and placement of the different sections of the letter using, for example, a heatmap.
What does CTR mean?
In practice, CTR (click-through rate) means how many recipients clicked on your message. This includes all links added to the newsletter. By using the analytics of your email marketing tool, you can see how many times each link in your newsletter has been clicked and who the clickers were.
This is how you improve the CTR of your newsletter
With the help of four tips, let's discover how you can improve the click-through rate of your newsletter.
1. Make sure you don't have too much information in your letter
Filling the newsletter with too much text is perhaps one of the most common mistakes in newsletter communication. It is often forgotten that the purpose of the newsletter is to lead the reader somewhere else, mostly to a website, an online store, or a landing page.
You should mostly include "teasers" of stories in the newsletter, i.e. concise and interesting descriptions of what can be expected behind the link. A short newsletter is easier to read and does not seem insurmountable to the person opening the letter. A good CTR is much easier to achieve when the email opener can read through the letter and click on its link.
By adding some of your blog articles and content to the newsletter, you direct the newsletter subscribers to finish reading the content on your website.
2. Build a clear Call-to-Action (CTA)
With the help of Call-to-Actions (CTAs), you lead the reader toward your goal, which in newsletters is usually the most significant link in the letter or one of them. For this reason, it is designed to stand out clearly from its background and in such a way that the text of the button is as attractive as possible to its recipient.
With a well-implemented CTA, it is possible to significantly increase the newsletter's CTR.
A good CTA:
- Stands out from the background
- Speaks to your audience
- Entices the reader to take action
- Fits the main message of your newsletter
3. Optimize newsletters for mobile devices
Making sure that your newsletter is fully mobile-optimized is a smart and bulletproof way to improve the letter's CTR. Did you know that 81% of all emails are now read on mobile?
Nothing is more frustrating than having too small text or buttons you can’t click so make sure your newsletters have a big enough font and CTA buttons for easy mobile navigation. Remember to always test your newsletters on mobile devices to make sure the layout looks the same for all recipients and works on mobile.
4. Decide what is a good number for you
The best way to see if your email marketing numbers are improving is to compare the results to your earlier numbers. If the numbers are improving you’re on the right track. However, don’t just stare at one specific email marketing metric.
Keep in mind what your goal is in email marketing. Do you want to get more website visitors or inform your coworkers about the latest company news?
For example, internal communications tend to have open rates close to 100% whereas B2B emails have a significantly lower percentage.
