Today’s subject in our series “Online Marketing Performance Indicators” is the click-to-open rate (CTOR).
In part 3 of our series, we introduced you to the click-through rate (CTR), which represents the number of clicks by recipients of your e-mail shot or newsletter as a percentage of the number of recipients. What the CTOR relates the number of clicks to is, in contrast, the number of recipients that went on to open the newsletter that they found in their inboxes:
The higher the CTOR, the more positive the expectations of receivers regarding the quality and relevance of what you are offering them. The CTOR also indicates how well the call-to-action elements in your newsletter have performed.
Because only the receivers that actually open their e-mails go into the denominator of the CTOR definition, the CTOR is usually significantly higher than the CTR. According to e-mail marketing provider Inxmail’s German study “E-mail Marketing Benchmark 2015”, the CTOR for B2B newsletters in Germany averaged 10 to 15 % in 2014, whereas the CTR was only 3.3 %.
These figures are hardly suitable as a guidance. What most affects the CTOR are your business sector and the quality of your distribution list. It therefore makes sense to carry out extensive tests to determine your true CTOR. Having done that, there are several knobs to twiddle with if you want to optimise your CTOR. They typically include the subject line, the wording, a clearly structured body text and easily understandable calls-to-action – or more precisely – calls-to-click.
The weekday of dissemination also matters
An often unrecognised success factor is the day of the week on which direct mailings are sent out. Inxmail has observed the following for the B2B sector:
Click-to-open rate displayed in a line graph. Weekdays of year 2013 and 2014. Source: Inxmail – E-Mail-Marketing Benchmark 2015
Click-to-open rate displayed in a line graph. Weekdays of year 2013 and 2014. Source: Inxmail – E-Mail-Marketing Benchmark 2015
Thursday has regularly proved to be the best weekday, with Saturday faring worst. But again, there’s nothing that beats finding out for yourself what’s best. More importantly still, you have to know who they are, the people out there in front of their computer screens opening your e-mails. When do they read their e-mails? What do they want to know on an ordinary working day? Fortunately, no one knows your readers better than you do. If not, find out about them, and fast.
What is your experience with the CTOR? Do you have a preferred day of the week for dissemination?
