Email click-through rate is the share of delivered emails that produced at least one click on a link inside. Divide unique clicks by emails delivered and multiply by 100: 18 clicks from 900 delivered emails is a 2% click-through rate. Across all senders in 2025 the average was 2.09%, with 2-4% counting as good and anything above 4% as strong, according to Pushwoosh’s CTR benchmark analysis.
Click-through rate is the most trustworthy engagement number you have. Unlike email open rate, which privacy features have made unreliable, a click requires a human to decide to do something. And for a business that sells and then delivers, it is the last measurable step before an actual order: someone taps through from your Tuesday availability email to the order form, and Thursday’s route gets one more stop.
This post covers what happens after the open. If your click rate looks bad but your mail may not be arriving in the first place, start with email bounce rate instead, and see the full email marketing metrics scorecard for how clicks fit alongside the other five numbers.
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The Bottom Line
- Click-through rate = unique clicks ÷ emails delivered × 100. The 2025 cross-industry average was 2.09%.
- Judge CTR by email type, never as one blended figure. Welcome emails average 16-26%, triggered emails 5-10%, newsletters 3-4%, and promotional broadcasts 1-3%.
- Click-to-open rate is the better content metric, because it removes the subject line from the equation. Averages sit near 6-7%; strong campaigns reach 10-15%.
- Automated flows crush broadcasts. Klaviyo’s 2026 data across 205,000-plus brands shows a 5.58% click rate for flows against 1.69% for campaigns.
- One email, one action. Competing links are the most common reason a well-written email gets few clicks.
- A click that leads to a slow, mobile-hostile order page is a wasted click. Measure what happens after it, not just the click itself.
How to calculate email click-through rate
Two formulas share the name, which is why numbers rarely match across platforms.
Click-through rate (click rate): unique clicks ÷ emails delivered × 100. This is what most platforms mean by CTR, and it is the figure benchmark reports use.
Click-to-open rate (CTOR): unique clicks ÷ unique opens × 100. This measures only the people who actually opened.
“Unique” matters. If one customer clicks your order link four times, that is one unique click and four total clicks. Total clicks inflate your numbers and tell you nothing about how many people acted, so always work from unique.
Use click rate when comparing yourself to a benchmark or to your own past sends. Use click-to-open rate when you want to judge the email’s content specifically, since it holds the subject line’s performance constant. If open rate is healthy and CTOR is weak, the problem is inside the message.
What is a good email click-through rate?
The blended average is nearly useless because email types perform on completely different scales. A welcome email and a promotional broadcast are not the same product.
| Email type | Typical CTR |
|---|---|
| Welcome email | 16-26% |
| Triggered / automated | 5-10%+ |
| Transactional | 5%+ |
| Newsletter | 3-4% |
| Promotional broadcast | 1-3% |
Source: Pushwoosh email CTR benchmarks.
Against the cross-industry tiers, below 1% signals a relevance or targeting problem, 1-2% is an acceptable baseline, 2-4% is good, and 4% or better is strong. Industry matters too: restaurants and other high-frequency promotional senders sit at the bottom of the range, while senders talking to high-intent audiences sit at the top.
For a food, floral or wholesale operation, the fair comparison is your own history by email type. If your weekly availability list runs at 4% and your monthly newsletter runs at 1.5%, the newsletter is the thing to question, not the availability list, which is doing exactly what it should.
Why automated emails get more clicks than campaigns
The largest available lever on click-through rate is not writing. It is timing.
Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmark analysis of more than 205,000 brands found automated flows clicked at 5.58% against 1.69% for scheduled campaigns, and produced nearly 41% of all email revenue from 5.3% of sends. Food and beverage senders showed the same pattern, with flows reaching a 2.46% placed-order rate versus 0.26% for broadcasts.
The reason is that a flow arrives when the recipient is already thinking about you. A broadcast arrives when you happened to schedule it. For a delivery operation, the triggers already exist in your order history:
- Welcome email, sent within an hour of signup, while the person still remembers finding you. This is the highest-CTR email you will ever send.
- Order confirmation, which is transactional but can carry one relevant link: the reorder button or the delivery-tracking page.
- Reorder reminder, timed to how long the product actually lasts. Five days for a bread account, two weeks for a floral subscription, a month for pantry wholesale.
- Cutoff reminder for customers who usually order by Tuesday and have not yet, sent Tuesday morning.
- Lapsed customer email for the account that ordered weekly for a year and has been quiet for three weeks.
Build those five and your overall click rate rises without you improving a single subject line.
Eight ways to improve your email click-through rate
1. Ask for one thing
The most common cause of a low click rate is a message with four competing links. Decide what a single reader should do (place this week’s order, book the delivery slot, read one recipe) and make everything in the email point there. Secondary links, if you need them, belong in a footer, not beside the main call to action.
2. Make the call to action a decision, not a label
“Click here” and “Learn more” ask for a mouse movement. “See this week’s availability”, “Reserve Thursday delivery” and “Reorder your usual” ask for something a person actually wants. Name the outcome, not the mechanic.
3. Put the link where a phone reader will find it
Most of your list reads on a phone, in gaps between other work. Put your primary link above the fold, repeat it once near the end, and make it a tappable button at least 44 pixels tall. Send yourself every campaign and read it on your phone before it goes out. This single habit catches more click-rate problems than any analysis.
4. Match the subject line to the content exactly
A subject line that promises one thing and an email that delivers another produces the worst possible pattern: a good open rate and a terrible click-to-open rate, followed by a rising unsubscribe rate. Overpromising costs more than it earns, every time.
5. Segment before you write
Segmentation lifts clicks more reliably than copy does. Wholesale accounts and retail customers want different emails. So do customers on Tuesday routes and customers on Friday routes. A smaller, better-matched send outperforms a bigger, vaguer one, and it protects your sender reputation too.
6. Use images to direct attention, not to carry the message
A photograph of this week’s actual product earns clicks. An email built entirely as one large image fails for anyone with images blocked, and looks like spam to filters. Keep the offer and the call to action in real text.
7. Give clicking a reason that expires
Order cutoffs are deadlines that already exist, and they work where invented urgency does not. “Thursday delivery closes Wednesday at noon” is a real constraint your customers already respect. Use the constraint you actually have.
8. Test one variable at a time
Test the call-to-action copy, then the button position, then the send time, in separate sends, with enough volume to mean something. Below roughly a thousand delivered emails per variant, you are reading noise. For a small list, run the same test across several weeks instead.
What to check when clicks go up but orders do not
A healthy click rate and flat revenue means the problem moved off the email and onto whatever the click leads to. Work through four things.
The page loads slowly or badly on a phone. Time it on mobile data, not office wifi.
The order form asks too much. Every extra field costs you completions. A returning wholesale account should not be re-entering a delivery address.
The delivery option the customer wants is not there. If your email advertises same-day but the form only offers next week, the click was wasted at the last step. The delivery promise in the email and the options at checkout have to match.
They wanted to talk to someone. Plenty of wholesale and catering orders get placed by phone after an email prompts them, and that order never shows up as an email conversion. If your click rate is strong and attributed revenue is weak, check whether call volume rose on send days before concluding the campaign failed. Operations that take a lot of orders this way often route them through contact centre software so the call is logged against the customer rather than lost.
That last one is worth tracking deliberately. Ask on the phone how the customer heard about the offer, and you will often find your email is working better than your dashboard suggests.
Frequently asked questions about email click-through rate
What is a good click-through rate for email? Between 2% and 4% for most senders, with the 2025 cross-industry average at 2.09%. Judge by email type: welcome emails reach 16-26%, newsletters 3-4%, and promotional broadcasts 1-3%.
What is the difference between click rate and click-through rate? Most platforms use them interchangeably for unique clicks divided by emails delivered. The meaningful distinction is against click-to-open rate, which divides clicks by opens instead.
What is a good click-to-open rate? Averages sit around 6-7%. Strong campaigns reach 10-15%, and above 20% is exceptional.
Why is my click-through rate dropping? Check bounce rate first, in case fewer emails are arriving. Then look at list age, whether recent emails carried more competing links than usual, and whether you have raised your sending frequency.
Does CTR affect deliverability? Indirectly, yes. Clicks are a positive engagement signal to mailbox providers, so emails that get clicked help future emails reach the inbox.
How many clicks do I need before the number means anything? Around a thousand delivered emails per comparison. Below that, combine several sends of the same type before drawing conclusions.
Where to start
Pick your most recent promotional email and count the links in it. If there are more than three destinations, that is your first fix, and it costs nothing.
Then build the welcome email, if you do not have one. It is the highest-clicking message in email marketing, it only has to be written once, and it goes out while a new customer is still interested enough to have just given you their address. After that, work through the other flows in order of how often the trigger happens.
If your current platform cannot segment by delivery day or order history, those flows are hard to build well. Our comparison of email marketing software covers which tools handle it.
