Click-Through Rate vs Click to Open Rate

Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR) measure email engagement in different ways, focusing on distinct aspects of campaign performance. CTR calculates the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in your email out of the total number of emails delivered, providing a broad view of your email's overall effectiveness from delivery to click. CTOR, meanwhile, measures the percentage of people who clicked on a link after opening your email, specifically evaluating how compelling your email content was to those who actually saw it. While CTR blends the effectiveness of subject lines and content together, CTOR isolates content performance by only considering emails that were opened.

An email marketer should focus on CTR when evaluating the overall performance of different campaigns or when reporting high-level results to stakeholders, as it accounts for the entire email journey. For instance, if comparing monthly newsletters against promotional emails, CTR shows which type drives more overall engagement relative to send volume. However, CTOR becomes more valuable when specifically optimizing email content, layout, or calls-to-action. If a campaign has a high open rate but low CTOR, this indicates that while the subject line was compelling, the content itself failed to engage recipients, suggesting a need to revise the email design, messaging, or offer rather than the subject line or sending strategy.