Click-through rate is calculated as unique clicks divided by delivered emails, expressed as a percentage. A related metric, click-to-open rate (CTOR), divides unique clicks by unique opens and measures how compelling the email content was for people who actually read it.
CTR has become the primary email engagement metric for many MOps teams since Apple Mail Privacy Protection undermined open rate reliability. Unlike opens, clicks require the recipient to actively engage with the email content, making the metric much harder to inflate artificially.
B2B email CTR benchmarks typically range from 2% to 5%, though this varies significantly by industry, email type, and audience segment. Transactional and triggered emails (like welcome sequences) tend to have higher CTR than batch newsletters. Highly targeted segments outperform broad sends.
Improving CTR involves several tactics: a clear, single CTA (too many links dilute clicks), compelling CTA copy that communicates value, relevant content matched to the audience segment, mobile-optimized design (over 50% of emails are opened on mobile), and strategic link placement (above the fold and repeated at the bottom).
One caution: some corporate email security tools (like Barracuda, Proofpoint, and Mimecast) scan links in incoming emails for malware, which can register false clicks. This is less pervasive than the Apple Mail open rate problem but worth acknowledging. If you see unusually high CTR from a specific domain, security scanning may be the cause.