How to improve your email click-through rate

Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach and connect with supporters, volunteers, and fundraisers. While you may have thousands, or hundreds of thousands of social media followers, you don’t own their data – and you don’t really know what they’re really interested in.

Your email lists are so valuable because it’s data that you own. People have actively opted in to hearing from you, so they are warm to receiving your emails. Having said that, it doesn’t mean of course that your emails are always going to be opened, read and acted upon.

What does ‘click-through rate’ mean?

A click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who clicked on a link within your email, in relation to how many emails were sent. It’s an engagement metric as, by clicking the link, they are taking an action and engaging with your content.

What’s a good CTR?

Benchmarks can vary widely, but both Mailchimp’s Email Marketing Benchmarks (last updated in 2019) and Campaign Monitor (updated in 2021) have an average CTR for non-profits at 2.79% and 2.7% respectively. So if your CTR is above 2.7%, you are performing better than the average. 

Whilst industry benchmarks are helpful, it’s better to benchmark against yourself and previous campaigns. If you’re achieving a 3.2% CTR, think how you can optimise your emails to increase your CTR to 4% and so on.

Tips to improve your click-through rate

Segment your lists

It’s important to segment your email lists as everyone on your list is not going to be interested in everything that you do. The more targeted your audience, the more likely they will open your email and click on the links within it.

Improve your subject line

To improve your CTR, you first need people to open your email. One way to ensure a better open rate is to make sure that you have a concise, compelling subject line.

According to OptinMonster, 47% of recipients open an email based on the subject line and 69% report email as spam, based solely on the subject line – so it’s a critical factor in email marketing.

Top tips are to optimise your subject line for mobile, as most people open email on their phone – this means it should be no more than nine words, or 60 characters.

Ensure that people know what to expect when they open your email. Don’t try to be too cryptic or mysterious – people are busy, they just want to know what the email is about.

Add preview text

According to Litmus, 24% of people look at the preview text before deciding to open an email. Preview text can help you expand on your subject line and give a bit more information about what the reader can expect. Be sure to add preview text to your emails to entice more opens.

Ensure your formatting is spot-on

Since most people read email on their mobile, it’s crucial that your email is optimised for mobile and that your email template is mobile responsive. But there are other formatting areas to consider improving, such as:

• Make sure your email isn’t too text heavy. Have paragraphs and add sub-headings to make it easier for the reader to scan
• If you’re adding video or images, make sure that they are not too large and that they are formatted correctly. Images should also only be used as an aesthetic, not for providing key information as some networks will block them

Have one call to action

When you’re sending an email, it’s important that you’re only asking the recipient to do one thing. So think about what the objective of your email is – if it’s to get sign-ups for a challenge event, then that should be the entire focus of the email and the only call to action should be to sign up. Don’t add in a donation ask as well.

A top tip is to add your call to action near the top of the email. This is because a lot of people won’t read your entire email, so if you’re only adding your call to action at the bottom, you’ll miss out on lots of clicks. Position it near the top, and again throughout the email. This example from Macmillan Cancer Support has the donate button three times within the email – at the top, in the middle and at the end.

Adding your call to action multiple times will help improve your CTR.

Resend to non-openers

Resend your email to those who didn’t open it the first time around and give them another opportunity to open your email. Try using a different subject line and test sending on a different day and at a different time, to see if that impacts open rate and CTR.