Email click-through rate: 8 mistakes that lower it

Email click-through rate (CTR, also called click rate) is the share of recipients who clicked at least one link in an email, out of the number of delivered emails. The average across industries is 2.1 to 2.6 %, ranging from 1.5 to 4.9 % by industry. It is a more reliable measure of newsletter success than the open rate, because unlike opens, email apps do not generate clicks on their own. Eight mistakes lower click-through rate most often: the newsletter only sells, it lacks a human tone, the content is not tailored to the reader, it does not work on a phone, it is too long, it has impersonal images, an unclear call to action and nobody tests it. Below you will find how to calculate click-through rate, what is normal and how to fix each mistake.

Key takeaways

1. Click-through rate = unique clicks ÷ delivered emails × 100. Click-to-open rate (CTOR) uses opened emails instead.
2. The average across industries is 2.1 to 2.6 %, around 2.0 % in Europe, and CTOR around 6.8 %.
3. Clicks are more reliable than the open rate, which is inflated by automatic opens.
4. One clear call to action and content relevant to the reader help most.
5. According to a 2017 Mailchimp study, segmented campaigns had 100.95 % more clicks than campaigns sent to the whole list.
6. An A/B test in Quanda can pick the winner by clicks, and a second wave reaches those who did not click.

In short: what it is, what types there are, what lowers it and what is at stake

• What it is: the share of recipients who clicked at least one link, out of delivered emails.
• What types there are: click-through rate from delivered emails (CTR) and click-to-open rate from opened emails (CTOR).
• What lowers it: sales pressure, an impersonal tone, one-size-fits-all content, poor display on mobile, long text, stock photos, an unclear call to action and a lack of testing.
• What is at stake: chasing clicks with a misleading subject line increases unsubscribes and spam complaints.

What has changed since the article was published: The article first appeared in Czech in November 2020 under the title 8 mistakes that threaten the click-through rate of your newsletter, written by Denisa Kmeťová of Prospectea, a company specialising in content creation and corporate magazines. In October 2026 we rewrote it. We added how to calculate click-through rate, a comparison with averages from 2023 to 2025, a fix for each mistake and the process in Quanda. We removed an outdated 2020 figure on the share of mobile devices and the often quoted claim about an eight second attention span, which has no verifiable source.

What click-through rate is and how to calculate it

Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of recipients who clicked at least one link in an email, out of the number of delivered emails. It is calculated from unique clicks: each recipient is counted once, even if they click several links.

Click-through rate = unique clicks ÷ delivered emails × 100

If you deliver 1,000 emails and 25 people click at least once, your click-through rate is 2.5 %. Calculate from delivered, not sent emails, otherwise bounced addresses distort the result.

Click-to-open rate (CTOR) is the share of recipients who clicked, out of those who opened the email. CTR shows the overall result of the campaign, CTOR tells you whether the content delivered what the subject line promised. If the open rate holds and CTOR falls, the problem is in the email content, not the subject line.

In the campaign statistics in Quanda you will find clicks in total (all clicks) and clicks uniquely (the number of recipients who clicked at least once). Further down there are clicks for each link and a list of people who clicked. Details are in the help article Statistics of a simple e-mail campaign.

Some clicks can be automatic, though. With business recipients, links in an email are often opened by email security filters that check them before or right after delivery. You can recognise such a click when one recipient clicks every link in the email within a few seconds of delivery. Quanda does not filter automatic clicks out of its statistics. If you mainly send to business addresses, track what people do on your website after the click as well as the click-through rate.

Even so, click-through rate is a more reliable measure today than the open rate. Opens are largely generated automatically by email apps, mainly Apple Mail, so open rates come out higher than reality. Why is explained in Email open rate: is 20 % a lot or a little?

What click-through rate is normal

The average click-through rate across industries is 2.1 to 2.6 % according to Mailchimp and MailerLite. Industries differ a lot, though:

Source: Mailchimp, Email Marketing Benchmarks, data updated in December 2023; MailerLite, Email Marketing Benchmarks for December 2024 to November 2025.

The surveys come from tools whose customers mostly send B2C newsletters in the US and Western Europe. Treat them as a rough range. A comparison with your own previous campaigns tells you the most: when click-through rate falls three campaigns in a row, it is time to look for the cause among the mistakes below.

8 mistakes that lower click-through rate

Eight mistakes lower click-through rate most often: the newsletter only sells, there is no human tone, personalisation stops at the greeting, the email does not work on a phone, the text is too long, there are only stock photos, the call to action is unclear and nothing is tested. They go in order from content through form to evaluation, and for each one you will find how to fix it.

Mistake 1: The newsletter only sells

Help, do not sell. Put something useful in every newsletter, a tip, a guide or industry news, and an offer only where it follows on from the content.

Whatever your industry, there is one reliable way to put off your audience quickly: regularly send emails that contain nothing but promotion of your services and products. Nobody likes a hard sell. Set yourself a simple goal: be useful to your subscribers. Thoughtful content and useful advice build trust with recipients, and orders follow from that over time.

Mistake 2: There is no human tone

Write like a person. Send the newsletter in the name of a specific person from a real address and write as if you were writing to one reader.

Inboxes are flooded with newsletters. If an email screams impersonal mass mailing at first glance, it has little chance of catching attention. The least you can do is forget about an anonymous address such as info@ and use a real person as the sender. Do not be afraid of a personal note, an experience or a story from practice. People want to communicate with people, not machines, and they respond to an authentic email more often.

Mistake 3: Personalisation stops at the greeting

Personalise content, not just the greeting. Split your contacts into groups with tags and send each group content that is relevant to it.

Addressing people by name is standard today, but on its own it will not raise click-through rate. Personalisation is tailoring the content of an email to a specific recipient or group based on what you know about them: industry, interests, previous purchases. The more information about your subscribers you have in Quanda, the more precisely you can write to them. You insert contact details into the text with personalisation tags and create groups with tags.

Mailchimp showed that it pays off in its 2017 study Effects of List Segmentation on Email Marketing Stats on about 11,000 campaigns from 2,000 senders: segmented campaigns had 100.95 % more clicks than campaigns sent to the whole list. The study is older, and Mailchimp has not published a newer comparison on the same scale. How to split contacts and what to write to them is described in How to create a newsletter: 3 keys to success.

Mistake 4: The email does not work on a phone

Check the email on a phone. Before sending, switch the preview to mobile and send yourself a test email to your phone.

Emails are commonly read on a phone today. If the text shrinks to an unreadable size there or the buttons are so small a thumb cannot hit them, you lose clicks even with great content. The Quanda email editor creates responsive emails and you can switch the email preview to the mobile view. Before sending, send yourself a test email. Keep the button large enough and do not put links in the text right next to each other.

Mistake 5: A waterfall of words

Shorten the text. Split the text into short paragraphs with subheadings and leave longer content on the website the email links to.

Readers do not read an email, they scan it. They notice headings, images, buttons and links and get to the text only when something catches their eye. A long block of text puts them off before they reach the link. Weigh every word and keep only enough in the email for the reader to know why to click. The full article, guide or offer belongs on the website the email sends them to. That way the text becomes a reason to click.

Mistake 6: Only stock photos

Use your own images. Instead of stock photos, use photos of your team, product or customers and link the images.

A photo bank is the easiest route, but it should not be the only one. Authentic photos, original illustrations or a shot of the product in use catch more attention and set your newsletter apart from the competition. People also often click images, so always link an image to the same address as the button. Remember a descriptive alternative text in case the email app does not display images. How to style it so it shows as a prominent headline even without images is described in Can't see images in an email? Styled alt text shows a headline.

Mistake 7: An unclear call to action

Give one clear call to action. Every email should have one main goal, a prominent button saying what happens after the click, and a reason to click.

A call to action (CTA) is a button or link that tells the reader what to do next. When readers do not know where to click, they click nowhere. A “More” or “Click here” button says nothing. “Download the price list”, “Book a date” or “Read the guide” does. Put the main call to action at the top of the email and repeat it at the end.

Every topic also raises follow-up questions. You earn extra points when you link to the answers straight away: to a guide, a comparison or the next step, for example the best car insurance for a new car.

Mistake 8: You do not test anything

Test and evaluate. Run an A/B test with the winner picked by clicks and after every campaign check clicks per link in the statistics.

A/B testing means sending two versions of an email to small random groups of recipients to find out which works better. Try, for example, a button against a text link, different wording of the call to action or a different position. Results vary from audience to audience, so it pays to test on your own list.

In an A/B testing campaign in Quanda you set how large a share of recipients gets the test versions and how the winner is picked. For click-through rate, choose a higher % of total unique clicks, or a higher % of clicks on the selected URL when you are interested in one specific link. You set the evaluation from 1 hour to 7 days, and Quanda recommends 1 day. Quanda then automatically sends the winning version to the rest of the recipients. The process is described in the help article Setting up mailing in an A/B testing campaign.

Test ideas. Pick the winner by unique clicks.

Tip: Send people who did not click anything a second wave, a follow-up reminder. In our own campaign it lifted click-through rate by 83 %, and resending to those who did not open the email lifted it by 22 % in another campaign. You will find the process in Second wave email.

How to measure what happens after the click

The click is only the beginning. To see whether readers did on your website what you sent the email for, switch on the Google Analytics tracking code for links in the Quanda email editor. Quanda adjusts the links so that Google Analytics attributes visits to the campaign. Then mark key events (formerly goals) in Google Analytics 4, for example an enquiry or a purchase, and you will see which emails bring results, not just clicks. The process is described in the help article Tracking clicks with Google Analytics.

Watch out: Do not chase click-through rate at any cost. A misleading subject line or a call to action that promises something other than what readers find on the website lifts clicks in the short term, but increases unsubscribes and spam complaints.

Checklist: a newsletter people click

Before sending, check the content, tone, personalisation, mobile display, length, images, call to action and test.

• The newsletter brings something useful, and the offer follows on from the content.
• The sender is a specific person with a real address.
• The email goes to a group of contacts the content is relevant to.
• The mobile preview and the test email on a phone look fine.
• The text is short, and longer content is on the website.
• Images are your own, linked and have alternative text.
• The email has one main call to action with specific wording.
• After the campaign, I check click-through rate, CTOR and clicks per link.

Email click-through rate: summary

Click-through rate shows how many people your email prompted to take the next step. The average is 2.1 to 2.6 %, ranging from 1.5 to 4.9 % by industry, but a comparison with your own campaigns tells you the most. You raise it with useful content, a human tone, segmentation, one clear call to action and regular testing.

The article is based on the original text by Denisa Kmeťová of Prospectea, a company specialising in content creation and corporate magazines.

You can learn how to read campaign statistics and what to conclude from them in the free online course Campaign statistics: measure what works. And if you are not sure why nobody clicks your emails, get in touch, we will be happy to take a look.