click-to-open-rate
One of the most intriguing metrics in email marketing is the "click-to-open rate" (CTOR ) – an important measure of the effectiveness of your email message. This metric is the ratio of unique clicks as a percentage of unique opens. Essentially, it's a measure of how effective your message is in motivating the recipient to click a link once they have opened the message. The main idea is to look at the ratio of unique clicks in reference to the number of unique opens rather than in reference to the number of messages sent. To clarify, let's look at some sample numbers from the report of our last eNewsletter:
BTM September eNewsletter Statistics:
- Sent: 1,303
- Unique Opened: 394 (30.6%) - Total Opened: 843
- Unique Clicked: 62 (4.8%) - Total Clicked: 101
- Calculate CTOR: Unique Clicked (62) / Unique Opened (394)
- CTOR=.157 or 16%
So, as you can see, 16% of the recipients that opened our last eNewsletter clicked on a link – not too bad, and certainly better than the "unique clicked" rate of 4.8%. Ultimately, the CTOR metric is a better measure of the relevance of the message content, the effectiveness of the special offers as well as the overall layout and design of the message. It's also a good way to judge the timeliness of your offer as well as the placement and number of links within the message.
If you'd like to improve your CTOR metric, one of the easiest and most effective ways to do so is to update the design of your eNewsletter or ePostcard. If you're interested in taking your email programs to the next level, don't hesitate to contact us.