What does Click To Open mean?
CTOR (Click-to-Open Rate) is a metric expressed in percentages, which compares the number of people who open an email from a marketing campaign to the number of people who actually click within the email.
CTOR compares the number of unique clicks to the number of unique openings of an email and only measures the email content’s performance.
Why is it important to measure your CTOR?
The best metric to better understand the interest generated by a campaign and the performance of the content is the CTOR. Only when the copy is important or generates interest is when a user will want to press a Call-To-Action. Therefore, the higher the CTOR, the better will be the email copy.
Besides the CTOR and the content, other factors can be measured and improved, such as the quality of an email list, the email address of the person sending, the time and day the email is sent.
This gives a better signal of how the approach of an email and the message can impact the audience, in a case where the existing clicks belong to people who actually opened and read the email.
How to calculate Click To Open Rate?
The CTOR can be calculated by taking the number of clicks, dividing that number by the number of openings, and then multiplying this result by 100 so that the CTOR is expressed as a percentage.
The formula would look like this:
CTOR = Number of unique clicks / Number of unique opens x 100.
For example, if there were 135 clicks and 265 opens, then the CTOR is 50.94%.
Best practices for Optimizing your CTOR.
Individualize emails (personalization)
Emails can be personalized through slight details such as referencing the recipient with their personal name on the copy. At a general level, it is possible to send emails to clients depending on their latest actions.
Offer Quality content
Although this is a practice that may seem obvious, online marketers sometimes do not take it into account.
Improve CTAs
There is a goal for every email: to get giveaway signup, blog read, review, or product review. The CTA must be able to:
Tell the audience what to do precisely and not assume that the reader knows what will happen when they press the button. The best way to go is to give clear instructions and say it directly.
The Call To Action should be located where it is immediately visible when the email is opened.
It must have a good design, clearly visible, with striking and contrasting colors. If it is a text, it can be plain with a color different from normal text.
Use responsive email templates
The template that is chosen for the email should be able to adapt to all device sizes and different email clients. If the email cannot be read or if the images are of inappropriate size, users will not bother to verify it and will not take any action regarding it.
Emails must be capable of being easily understood
Emails must be able to be understood, this means that when someone only glosses over it, they will be able to capture the main objective of the email, be it a new blog, an offer, or a new feature of a product.
It is possible to use bullets, highlight the keywords using different sources, or separate the email into several sections divided by headers or separators.
The CTOR should be reviewed and compared in all campaigns
This serves to improve the evaluation of the importance of the content for the campaign. If the CTOR is good, there is a guarantee that the content offered to the audience is of quality. If, on the contrary, it is low, the content marketing strategy and approach should be reviewed.
Cleaning up the email list
This means removing inactive subscribers from the list.
If there are people on the list who have not opened any received emails in a long period (3-6 months), it is best to delete them from the list.
Most likely, removing them will improve the open rate.
Writing better subject lines
Taking time and effort to create and write an attractive subject line that ensures readers will pay attention.
Segment the list
When a list is segmented, it is separated into groups taking similar characteristics into account. This makes it possible to tailor campaigns to each individual group instead of sending the same generic email to all the list members.
Studies indicate that there is a higher open rate in segmented campaigns.