So this one time…at band camp…

Just kidding. This time I don’t have a short story to tie into the Support Blog (cue sad music). However, this means you get to the good stuff, the important stuff, that much faster! Yay!

I’d like to focus today’s topic on a little thing we call “click-through” here at Benchmark Email. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed an increased interest from clients regarding how the click-through rate is calculated. Allow me to illuminate this dark and mysterious area of your campaign report for you.

I suppose I should start by explaining what we mean by “click-through” (aka click performance.) The click or click-through rate is another metric that needs to be monitored on a consistent basis. It is a metric that tells you the percentage and number of times the links in your email have been clicked. This measurement is extremely important because it indicates whether or not the recipient is taking action.

Only those email campaigns that contain links are going to have a report for click performance. To locate your click-through rate, go to your Emails tab and select the campaign report icon on the right hand side of the campaign name. You will see a report that looks like this (the click rate is highlighted for your convenience):

Scroll down until you see the Click Performance box, which will look something like this:

Here is where some might find themselves a bit confused. I know I was the first time I looked at it. Many clients have asked me whether each number represents one person’s click or if it is each time they clicked it in total. So for the above example, did 20 individual subscribers click on the second link or could it be that 10 subscribers clicked on the same link twice (equaling 20 total clicks)?

The number you see next to a specific link is letting you know how many individual subscribers clicked on that link. They could have clicked it once, twice or even 20 times…but since it was the same person it will only count as 1 (this is referred to as a user’s “unique click”).

This same subscriber could have clicked on more than one link within your email though. This is where the different numbers come from if you have multiple links in one campaign. Subscriber “John Doe” could have clicked on all of your links while “Jane Doe” only clicked on two of the links. Because of this, you should treat each link separately when trying to determine the success of your campaign.

By analyzing your click performance, you can figure out where your links need to be and which links you should be focusing on in order to produce the actions you desire. If you are not seeing the numbers you were hoping for, play around with the location of links in your campaigns. Click-through rates are a great tool to ensure you are getting the most out of your campaigns!

For further reading on the subject of your email metrics and analytics, check out our free, downloadable marketing manual on Metrics: Tracking & Reporting with Benchmark Email.