What is the distinction between Click Rate and Click Through Rate (CTR)

[smcvarno]

I was looking at the Top Emails report on my HubSpot dashboard.

I noticed on this report there were two similar-sounding metrics.

Click Rate and Clikc Through Rate.

To me, these both sound like one and the same thing - but the values being reported are very different so clearly they are not.

Can someone point me towards (or provide) the definition of Click Rate vs Click Through Rate as used by this HubSpot report?

[Phil_Vallender · Accepted solution]

Hi @smcvarno 

Click rate is the percentage of people who were delivered your email that clicked through. 

Click through rate is the percentage of people who opened your email that clicked through. 

So the numbers will be very different. 

Hope this helps.

[GiantFocal]

Click Rate is the percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your email out of the total number of delivered emails. The formula: (# of clicks / # of delivered emails) x 100

Click Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your email out of the number of recipients who opened the email. The formula: (# of clicks / # of opened emails) x 100

Best regards,

Abraham Ernesto

[filipg]

I don't know why you'd ever want click rate if you have open rate readily available to find out if the subject worked, other than it's more accurate since it counts only delivered emails? But like for trend reasons, either works, no?

[JeremiahRunser]

Yes, thank you @dsdewhir. That helps a lot. I understand what they each do, but using them for targeted marketing didn't really make much sense. 👍

[dsdewhir]

Glad you found it helpful -- All the best to you in 2021!

[Aakar · Accepted solution]

Hi @smcvarno 

As @Phil_Vallender mentioned, these are two different metrics.

If you hover over the (i) icon on your email dashboard next to click rate & click through rate, you'll find the HubSpot's definition.

Click Rate: This is the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who were delivered your email. 

Click Through Rate: This is the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who opened your email.

For Example:

Total Delivered: 500
Total Opened: 300
Total Link Click: 200

Click Rate: (200/500)*100 = 40%
Click Through Rate: (200/300)*100 = 66%

Hope it helps.

Thanks

Aakar

[MMummau]

But don't you have to open the email to click the link regardless? 

[TFree]

Hi Aakar, 

When setting up an AB test, the winning metric explanations seem to contradict your answer: 

If Click rate is the measure of  people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who were delivered your email surely this would be affected by all of the factors that the description, in the above image, for Click through rate (Subject line, From name, preview text, from address and email content - Copy, placement and styling).

Meanwhile if Click through rate is the measure people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who opened your email, then surely this would only be affected by the parameters used to describe click rate in the above image (Email Content - copy placement and styling)
Is this an error in the explanations used by HS in this instance - i.e. they have been swapped arround? Or somewhere else. 

All the best,

Tristan 

[KateElizabeth]

YES! THANK YOU! @Aakar  THIS is the explanation I needed. Thanks for taking the time!

[KateElizabeth]

Hello, in these definitions

Click Rate: This is the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who were delivered your email. 

Click Through Rate: This is the percentage of people who clicked a link in your email out of the people who opened your email.

I highlighted the font in red where I found the difference in the definitions, however it still isn't clicking for me. How can someone click a link on an email delivered, but not opened? that's one in the same to me. 

Can anyone hlep clarify?

Sorry if I missed some explaination... thank you!

[sfouty1]

I know this is a little older than your last reply, but if someone else sees this, hopefully it will help them understand.

The number of clicks does not change. If 5 people clicked a link, 5 people clicked a link. They would also have opened the email.

The number that those clicks are being divided by is changing (total number of emails vs total number of opened emails).

[raelindenberg]

I think I understand this now thanks to your explanation, but this seems almost intentionally confusing...

It's sort of like CTR's are under the umbrella of click-rates. So, why not just talk about the CTR number since that has includes both people to whom the email was delivered, they opened, and they clicked...but, that's sort of describing the click-rate too.

Ugh. They need to pick one and stick with it. 

[dsdewhir]

They're actually providing you different metrics to let you take different actions. You might be interested in click rate to know, for example, how many people out of your ENTIRE email send clicked a link: "Oh, I emailed my whole customer list, and 10% of my customers clicked a link." You might not care at all what the clickthrough rate is, in this example -- just that 10% of your customers clicked something.

Clickthrough rate, on the other hand, tells you how many people clicked the link *only* out of those that opened it. Thus, if your click rate was low but your clickthrough rate was high, you would know that not many people opened the email (and check the open rate to validate that knowledge), but for those who did, it was very effective in getting them to click -- so you would know for future campaigns that your body copy was effective in driving clicks, but maybe your subject line (for example) needed work to get more people to open. 

These are just examples of why these two metrics exist, and why they might be important to different people for different reasons. Hope it's helpful to someone, either now or to someone who might find this thread in the future 🙂

[letstacoboutit]

I have a high click rate but a low clickthrough rate. What could this indicate?

[Hubspot_Learner]

How is this possible? Click-through rate will always be higher than the click rate because the number of people the email was delivered to will always be higher than (or at least equal to) the number of people who opened the email. Hence, your rate will always be higher if your divisor is lower.

[ELeahy]

This is still super confusing to me.

So one metric will measure how many people clicked the link in the email but ONLY if they OPENED the email. 

The other metric will measure how many people clicked the link but didn't necessarily open the whole email to click the link, just saw the email in the preview pane and clicked the link? 

[dsdewhir]

No, that's not quite it, @ELeahy  -- it can be confusing, for sure! Maybe a practical example: 

Let's say I have a list of 100 people that I send an email to. 30 people open that email. 10 of those 30 people click a link in that email.

The Click rate would be 10 clicks / 100 sends,  or 10%.

The Clickthrough rate would be 10 clicks / 30 opens, or ~ 33%.

So I could say, then, that of the list I sent it to, 10% of the people clicked something. I could also say that of the people who opened my email, 33% of them clicked something. 

Now, suppose you had similar results across all your email sends. An interesting way of looking at it would be to say "Well, I know that when I send an email, only 10% of my list are going to click something.  But I know that of the people who open my email, more than a third will click something. So, I'm going to focus on improving my subject lines to see if I can get more people to open my emails."

Hope this is helpful!

[KateElizabeth]

thanks!!

[cmilerick]

Kate - I have the exact same blip in understanding the difference.  How can someone that was delivered an email, click on the link?  They would have had to have opened it, no?    I also don't understand.  

[JAmdur]

The number of people clicking in both instances is the same (they ALL opened the email), what makes the difference is what it is measured against. In click rate, it's being measured against the delivered emails, in click through rate, it's measured against the number of opens. For example:

1000 people got delivered an email
100 people opened an email 

10 people clicked in the email

Click rate: 10 ÷ 1000 = 1%
Click through rate: 10 ÷ 100 = 10%

Hope that makes sense!

[Phil_Vallender · Accepted solution]

Hi @smcvarno 

Click rate is the percentage of people who were delivered your email that clicked through. 

Click through rate is the percentage of people who opened your email that clicked through. 

So the numbers will be very different. 

Hope this helps.