Email Click-Through Rates (10 Most Powerful Tactics)

Have you ever felt like a detective trying to unravel the mystery behind your email campaign's performance? 

Understanding email click-through rates (CTRs) can often feel like trying to outsmart a clever mouse in a game of strategy and wit. 

Just as a well-placed mouse trap, baited with the right treat, can catch a cunning rodent, a well-crafted email can snag the attention and action of your subscribers.

In this comprehensive guide, we're diving deep into the world of email CTRs. This guide is your blueprint for success, from the basics of what constitutes a good CTR to a step-by-step breakdown of ten potent strategies designed to boost your numbers. 

Whether you're looking to refine your call-to-action, personalize your content, or optimize for mobile devices, we've got you covered. 

Let's begin transforming your email campaigns into powerful, click-generating machines.

Email Click-Through Rates FAQ

Before we dig deeper into email CTRs, let’s answer a few basic questions you might have.

What Is Email Click-Through Rate?

Email click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of email subscribers who clicked on at least one link in your email. To calculate email CTR, divide the total number of emails you sent by the number of people who clicked on them. Then, multiply your answer by 100 to turn it into a percentage.

What Is a Strong Click-Through Rate for Email?

Email marketing experts consider anything between 2-5% to be a strong click-through rate for email. Once again, your industry determines if you should gauge yourself on the higher or lower end of the spectrum. 

What Is a Good Email Click Rate in 2024?

Well, it depends. 

Many factors influence your CTR. Your industry, campaign type, and how engaged your subscribers are all affect how high or low your CTR will be.

According to a Get Response study, the average click-through rate across industries is ~2.1%. 

What Is a Good Increase in Click-Through Rate?

A 0.5% increase is significant and will move the conversion needle. 

Is a 7% Click-Through Rate Good?

A 7% email click-through rate is outstanding, as it’s way above the 2.1% average.

Is a 20% Click-through Rate Good?

A 20% email click-through rate is excellent. It’s comfortably higher than most industry averages, including those with high average CTR such as arts and entertainment, financial services, and health care.  

Now that the essentials are out of the way, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of increasing your email CTR.

10 Powerful Tactics for Boosting Your Email Click-Through Rates

Here are ten proven strategies to help you inspire your email subscribers to take action and improve your click-through rates.

1. Segment and Personalize Your Email List.

At the heart of any winning email marketing strategy lies the powerhouse of subscriber segmentation.

Why, you ask? 

Simple. When you segment your users based on their unique needs and interests, you're basically ensuring that they only get emails that pique their interest. And what does that lead to? A boost in engagement and – you guessed it – higher click-through rates.

Take Young Money's journey, for instance. 

They skyrocketed from a modest 2,000 to a whopping 35,000 subscribers. How? By masterfully tapping into their audience's love for finance and investing, all while weaving in compelling, story-driven content. 

The secret ingredient? Segmenting their content to align perfectly with the diverse interests of their audience massively ramps up engagement.

Now, let's break down some top-notch tips and best practices in subscriber segmentation:

• Start segmenting your readers as soon as they sign up. It's all about timing.

• Tailor your content based on what your users have bought in the past.

• Regularly survey your list and group them based on their stated preferences.

• Keep tabs on how users interact with your content and segment accordingly.

2. Write Engaging Content.

Content is king – but not just any content. It’s the kind that grabs attention, sparks interest, and gets those precious clicks. Think of your newsletter as a cocktail party. You want your guests – a.k.a. your subscribers – to be engaged, interested, and always looking forward to the next invite.

Fantasy Life used data-driven insights to skyrocket their click-through rates. By embracing beehiiv’s analytics powerhouse, they tuned into their subscribers’ heartbeats, leading to a whopping 200% increase in CTR. 

Now, take a look at The B-Side. They've cracked the code to Gen Z's heart in Boston, delivering news in a format that's just their vibe. The result? A stunning 60% open rate.

It's a clear signal that aligning your content with your audience's preferences is a surefire way to keep them engaged and clicking.

So how do you make your content the talk of the town?

• Craft Killer Email Subject Lines: Your subject line is your first impression – make it count. It's the red carpet to your content. Captivating, clear, and intriguing subject lines are your best bet to get those emails opened in the first place.

• Spin Engaging Stories: Everyone loves a good tale, especially if it's a success story or a heartfelt testimonial. Weave these stories into your content fabric. They're not just words; they're an experience, a journey that your readers want to embark on.

• Inject Humor: A little humor goes a long way. It turns your reader from a mere spectator to an active participant. The key is to keep it clean and non-offensive. Make them smile, and you've already won half the battle.

3. Polish Up Your Call To Action.

For subscribers to click on your email links, put extra effort into your email call-to-action (CTA). A call-to-action is a hyperlinked line of text or button that takes a user to a specific website page after being clicked.

To entice more email subscribers to click on your CTA, make sure it’s:

• Simple, not complex
  People are more likely to respond to clear a straightforward CTA, not a difficult one, so use simple words, not hard, ambiguous ones. 

• Active, not passive

  Use action words that inspire readers to take specific action for the best results. Active words engage subscribers better than passive terms, e.g., download my ebook now, enroll in the course, or buy now.

• Apparent, not hidden

  If you want people to click on your call-to-action, don’t hide it. Make it big, bold, and colorful, so it pops out of your email message. Also, for your CTA to be visible, repeat it several times in your email using different terms.

4. Make Your Emails Visually Appealing.

It's no secret that we're visual creatures. 90% of the information that our brain processes is visual. 

That's why incorporating captivating visuals in your newsletter can make a world of difference. It's like giving your readers a visual feast that captures their attention from the get-go.

Here's how you can up your visual game:

• An attractive email template

• Background images, especially for promotional emails

• Header image at the top to grab readers’ attention right away

• Product images to showcase your product's brilliance

• Colorful CTA buttons to entice subscribers to click

Take Milk Road as an example. 

Their distinct newsletter design, complete with a signature style and strong branding, made them a standout in the crowded inbox world. This not only fueled their rapid growth but also played a key role in their acquisition. It's a clear indicator of how powerful visuals can be in boosting engagement and making your brand memorable.

5. Clean Up Your Email List Often.

Over time, your audience's interest in your emails wanes.

People aren't as excited to hear from you as they were initially. As a result, they don't click on your links as often as they used to.

The solution?

Remove disengaged subscribers from your email list regularly. Culling disinterested subscribers will leave only people thrilled to hear from you. Such subscribers will engage with your emails and click on your links. 

Use these email list hygiene tips to have a healthy email list:

• Use double opt-in to ensure that new subscribers want to receive your emails.

• Determine and set engagement criteria to identify and cull disengaged subscribers.

• Let your subscribers choose how often they want to hear from you and which emails they wish to receive.

6. Optimize Emails for Mobile Devices.

Did you know that up to 85% of people in the United States regularly check emails on their smartphones?

Optimizing emails for mobile devices is now a must for newsletter content creators. 

That's why, for newsletter creators, optimizing for mobile is essential. No one likes fumbling with tiny CTAs or zooming in to click a link. Poor mobile optimization is a fast track to losing reader engagement and tanking your click-through rates.

Resume Worded's switch to beehiiv, managing over a million subscribers, is a masterclass in mobile optimization. This move boosted their deliverability and significantly ramped up engagement, proving the importance of a platform that excels in mobile-friendly email campaigns.

Here are a few mobile email optimization tips for boosting your CTR:

• Use a mobile-friendly email template so that your emails render correctly on smartphones.

• Make sure that your CTA buttons are at least 44 x 44 pixels wide and tall, as per Apple’s recommendation.

• Put a CTA higher up in your message so that readers don't have to scroll a lot to see it.

• Ensure that your text size is at least 16 pixels for easy readability.

• Use the same font type for text links and space text links appropriately so that users don't click on the wrong link.

• Keep your subject lines under 40 characters, so they don't get cut off because of limited space on smartphones.

• Always preview your emails to see how they look on mobile devices before you hit the send button.

7. Include Social Media Sharing Icons.

Another proven method for increasing email click-through rates is adding social media sharing icons to your emails.

Research by Get Response revealed that emails with social sharing buttons got up to 158% more clicks than those without sharing buttons.

That's a massive increase.

Why?

It's because humans are social beings. We love sharing entertaining and helpful content with others. Deep down, we all believe happiness is best when shared.

Include social media icons in your email message to increase your click-through rate today. 

8. Focus On Triggered Email Campaigns.

Another tried-and-tested tactic for increasing email click-through rates is using triggered emails.

Triggered emails, a.k.a. behavioral emails or transactional emails, are emails sent automatically based on specific subscriber actions or certain predetermined conditions.

Triggered emails have higher engagement rates than blast emails because:

• They are more specific and personalized than generic blast emails.

• They hit the inbox immediately, when the user’s action is still fresh.

In short, triggered email campaigns are more relevant than batch emails.

Wunderkind found that triggered emails have 2.2X open rates, 2.1X click rates, and 4.1X conversion rates compared to batch-and-blast emails.

Source: Wunderkind

Some commonly triggered emails that you should include in your email workflow for more clicks include:

• Welcome emails for new subscribers who sign up for your newsletter and other offers

• Abandoned cart emails for people who added items to a shopping cart but didn't go through with the purchase

• Onboarding emails to help new customers use and maximize a product or service

9. Create a Sense of Urgency and the Fear of Missing Out.

Getting the click sometimes depends on how you present your offer in your email. 

You can turn a regular offer into an uncommon click-attracting one by using the psychological triggers of urgency and the fear of missing out (FOMO). 

Here’s how:

• Put an end date to your offers instead of leaving them open-ended. People will take action promptly because they don’t want to miss out.

• Adding a countdown timer to your emails builds a sense of urgency, so more users click your links as they see the clock winding down.

• Include expressions like ‘limited time offer’ and state how long an offer is available in your headlines, so readers take action straightaway instead of postponing it to another day. 

• Add words and phrases that build a sense of urgency to inspire subscribers to act immediately, e.g., now, today, hurry, last chance, today only, offer ends on, etc. 

10. Test and Optimize Every Element of Your Campaign.

Thanks to intelligent modern marketing tools, you don’t have to wait forever to see if your marketing tactics are working.

A/B testing allows you to make informed data-backed changes to your email campaigns. You can A/B test every campaign element to determine what's tanking or hiking your email CTRs. If you are wondering, an A/B or split test compares two or more versions of a specific element to see which performs better.

These days, you can test virtually anything, including:

• CTA buttons

• Subject lines

• Preview text

• Body copy.

• Email Frequency

• Different offers

• Email layouts

• Images

• Sending times

Boost email clicks with a robust A/B testing regimen.  As a contemporary newsletter platform, beehiiv allows you to easily test and optimize all of the vital elements of your email campaigns, even if you are a beginner.

Drive More Action From Subscribers With Higher Email Click-Through Rates

There you have it – our comprehensive guide on how to increase those crucial email click-through rates. 

Remember, boosting your emails’ appeal is not a set-and-forget task; it's an evolving art. 

It's about blending strategy with creativity, data with storytelling, and insights with intuition. As you navigate through this journey, keep testing, refining, and applying what works. 

The goal? To turn your emails into can't-miss, must-click messages that resonate with your audience.

Looking to supercharge your email campaigns with seamless A/B testing, mobile optimization, and stunning visual appeal? 

Join the beehiiv community, where powerful features meet user-friendly design, helping you create emails that look great and deliver results. 

Try beehiiv today and start crafting newsletters that captivate and convert!