Calculating CTR%
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about CTR% – Click Through Rates- and what constitutes a ‘good’ or successful rate. First to point out the way to obtain CTR% and the different ways I’ve seen the rate calculated when it comes to eNewsletters.
For web metrics, its pretty straightforward. An advertiser gains 10,000 impressions, or unique page views where the ad resides. 100 people actually click on the ad, and the CTR% is effectively 1%.
For eNews delivery we calculate CTR% by measuring the amount of emails that were successfully delivered, say 55,000 for example, and measuring against total delivered, versus total opened. I have seen metrics calculated both ways, and they obviously give different results.
So if the open rate is 25%, 13,750 is our viewer number, but CTR is still calculated from successful send figure. If the click through is say 1500 total clicks, the CTR for that enewsletter is effectively 2.7% or rounding up for example 3%, If you based CTR off the opens, then your CTR would be almost 11%. So its wise to find out how the CTR is calculated to compare apples to apples.
Further, for each call to action, the click % for each unique link may be based off the pool of clicks or the 1500 number. So if one call to action yields 700 clicks, the clicks are 47% of the total clicks. But NET CTR now based off our total successful sent emails for this action is 1.2%.
So as an advertiser you may see numbers like 11% CTR and 47% share and feel great, while the 2.7% CTR and 1.2% NET CTR seems like a disappointment, but in the end, your result was the same.
So what is a successful CTR % rate? If you are after branding and mind share, this may have less importance that on a specific call to action to receive a catalog, whitepaper, video, or CD offering. Calculating the DW way based on an enewsletter with multiple advertisers, NET CTR of 1% is outstanding – or to use the click pool method- say 4-5% of the clicks. Even better is that we also provide levels of contact information and metrics associated with the click, so further, the advertiser can determine the quality of the lead, which carries much greater value than just a click of course.
And for those calls to action, its important to be compelling. Rino Mechanical recently ran a series of enews ads where they stated a specific technology was obsolete. This bold statement got people clicking – 20% of the total click pool in a single enewsletter.
At the end of the day, if its not a brand new technology or breakthrough, a message with no call to action, no offer, or lacks anything compelling probably will not get a decent CTR to materialize no matter how you calculate it.
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.