Email Marketing
15 Ways to Improve Your Newsletter Click-Through Rate
Opens are only half the job. If readers do not click through, your newsletter never gets a chance to move them closer to a decision.
Updated August 14, 2026 with a refreshed FAQ section.
Growing interest in your business through regular email campaigns is often called lead nurturing. But nurturing only works if people actually click through to your site. Average click-through rates across most industries sit in the low single digits, according to Mailchimp. That leaves a lot of room for a well-built email to outperform the average.
A stronger click-through rate builds credibility, positions your brand as useful rather than promotional, and drives the kind of site visits you can act on. Read more on why your company should send newsletters at all if that groundwork is still missing. Once readers land on your site, tools like SalesWings can pick up the thread by tracking that visit and feeding it into lead scoring, so the click becomes part of a bigger picture rather than a one-off metric.
| Tip | Why it works |
|---|---|
| Subject line quality | Determines whether there is an open to click from at all |
| Mobile-first layout | Most opens now happen on a phone, not a desktop client |
| One primary CTA | Fewer choices means less friction and a clearer signal in your data |
| Segmented content | Relevance to the reader is still the strongest lever you have |
Subject line and audience
Earn the open first. The click starts before the email is even opened. A subject line that sets an accurate, specific expectation earns enough trust that the reader is willing to act once they get inside.
A/B test your subject lines. Send two variants to a small slice of the list, then roll the stronger performer out to everyone else. Most sending platforms support this natively, so there is little reason to skip it on a recurring send.
Align content with the segment, not the whole list. Content that speaks directly to a reader’s role or stage earns more clicks than a generic broadcast. Behavioral tracking tools like SalesWings can build those segments from what a lead has already shown interest in on your site.
Link out, don’t cram everything in. Give a short, compelling summary in the email itself and send the full depth to a page on your site. If the summary earns attention, the reader wants the rest of the story.
Layout and design
Design mobile-first. More opens now happen on a phone than a desktop client. If the layout is not built for a narrow screen first, most of your audience never gets a comfortable reading experience.
Use one bold CTA button, placed with intent. A visual button consistently outperforms a plain text link. Readers scanning left to right tend to notice a CTA more when it appears after a short block of supporting copy rather than before it.
Build the CTA in HTML, not as an image. Many inboxes block images by default. A button built from real HTML and CSS stays visible and clickable even when the rest of the email’s images do not load.
Structure content as an inverted pyramid. Lead with the single most important point, follow with supporting detail, and close with the CTA. Readers who stop scanning after the first line still get the core message.
Design for an F-shaped scan. Most readers’ eyes move across the top, drop down the left edge, and skim from there. Put your strongest line at the top and keep supporting detail aligned to the left so the natural scan path leads to the CTA.
Cut distracting content. Every extra link or offer competing for attention pulls clicks away from the one action you actually want. Keep only what supports that single CTA.
Keep the layout simple. A handful of well-chosen visuals reads as intentional. A crowded template reads as noise, and it makes the CTA harder to find at a glance.
Incentives and momentum
Make the benefit of clicking explicit. Tell the reader plainly what they get on the other side of the click, whether that is a deeper guide, a tool, or an answer to a question you raised. Vague curiosity converts worse than a clear payoff.
Add social sharing links. Emails with visible share icons tend to see meaningfully higher click activity than emails without them, since sharing itself is a form of engagement that pulls readers back into the email to act.
Add extra value in a P.S. Readers skimming the rest of the email often still read a closing P.S. line. It is a low-cost second chance to point toward the CTA.
Create a sense of timeliness. A newsletter that reads as current and relevant to this week outperforms one that feels recycled. Time-boxed offers or references to something happening now give the reader a reason to act rather than defer.
Used well, email remains one of the most effective tools in a marketing arsenal because it keeps your audience engaged through regular, expected touch points. Treat click-through rate as an ongoing KPI rather than a problem to solve once. Small, compounding improvements across these 15 areas add up to meaningfully more qualified traffic over time, and every one of those visits is a chance to track engagement and apply lead scoring before a rep ever picks up the phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a good newsletter click-through benchmark?
- How do CTR and CTOR differ?
- Which subject lines lift clicks fastest?
- Should I test CTA button placement?
- How does mobile design impact clicks?
- Does the F-pattern affect email layout?
- Should buttons be HTML or images?
- How many links should a newsletter include?
- Can segmentation meaningfully increase clicks?
What is a good newsletter click-through benchmark?
A good click-through rate varies by industry and audience, but most providers report low single-digit averages, so steady improvement against your own baseline matters more than chasing an industry number.
Benchmarks differ across sectors and platforms, and privacy features in some mail clients make cross-tool comparisons less reliable than they used to be. Track click-to-open rate alongside CTR for context, and build a rolling baseline by list segment and campaign type so you are iterating against your own history.
Tip: benchmark against your own trendline first, and send often enough, at minimum every couple of months, to have a trend to compare against.
How do CTR and CTOR differ?
CTR divides total clicks by total recipients, while CTOR divides unique clicks by unique opens. CTR reflects list and subject line performance, CTOR isolates how well the email content itself performs once opened.
Use CTR to judge overall campaign reach and subject line strength. Use CTOR to diagnose the body content, layout, and CTA once you know people are opening. A rising CTOR with a flat CTR usually points to an open-rate problem, while the reverse points to a content or targeting problem.
Tip: report both metrics side by side so you are never optimizing the wrong lever.
Which subject lines lift clicks fastest?
Subject lines influence clicks indirectly, by driving opens. Concise, benefit-led lines that match the offer inside tend to grow the pool of openers who go on to click.
Run A/B tests with a valid sample size, holding send time and audience constant. Carry the same promise from the subject line into the body and CTA so there is no mismatch between what was promised and what is delivered, since that mismatch quietly depresses CTOR even when opens go up.
Tip: set up an automated subject line split test on every recurring send rather than testing occasionally.
Should I test CTA button placement?
Yes. Placement changes behavior, so test an above-the-fold button, a button after a short block of copy, and a repeated CTA lower down to see what your specific audience responds to.
Reading patterns vary by audience and layout, so there is no universal best position. Start with one primary CTA placed after a brief supporting paragraph and a secondary text link further down, then measure clicks by position and let the data decide.
Tip: start with an early primary CTA, then test right-aligned placement against a centered layout.
How does mobile design impact clicks?
Mobile accounts for most opens in many inboxes, so responsive layouts, readable type, and large touch targets are essential to convert an open into a tap rather than a bounce.
Check your own client and device mix, keep copy scannable, compress images, and size buttons generously with real padding. Stack columns rather than forcing horizontal scroll, and keep the primary CTA within the first screen on a typical phone.
Tip: review your provider’s client-share report monthly and adjust the template if the mix shifts.
Does the F-pattern affect email layout?
Many readers scan in an F-shaped pattern, top line, second line, then down the left edge, so aligning headlines and CTAs to that path helps guide attention toward the action you want.
Put the strongest statement high and to the left, reinforce it with a short subhead, and place the CTA where that scan naturally lands next. Validate with click maps and scroll depth rather than assuming the pattern holds for your specific audience.
Tip: pair F-pattern placement with a single focused CTA to reduce decision friction.
Should buttons be HTML or images?
Use HTML and CSS buttons rather than image-only buttons, so the CTA stays visible and tappable even when a client blocks images by default.
Real HTML buttons load faster, work with screen readers, and can be edited without re-exporting an image. If you use an image-based CTA for design reasons, always pair it with a live text button as a fallback.
Tip: swap any remaining image buttons for bulletproof HTML buttons in your core template.
How many links should a newsletter include?
Fewer, clearer choices tend to drive more decisive clicks. Start with one primary CTA and at most one supporting link, so attention is not split.
Too many options create choice overload and make it harder to know which link actually worked. If you are curating several pieces of content, make one the hero with a button and keep the rest as plain text links.
Tip: if in doubt, cut a link and make the primary CTA more visually prominent instead.
Can segmentation meaningfully increase clicks?
Yes. Tailoring content by audience, lifecycle stage, and behavior raises relevance, which typically lifts both CTR and CTOR by matching the offer to what that segment actually cares about.
Start with simple segments such as product interest, role, or engagement recency. Use website behavior and past clicks to refine those lists and suppress disengaged contacts over time, which also protects deliverability.
Tip: use behavioral signals to build segments, then rotate the offer to match what each segment has shown interest in.
SalesWings CEO and Head of Product. Philip Schweizer is a co-founder at SalesWings, a martech platform for optimizing revenue operations at every step of the funnel through buyer insights. His background is in designing marketing and sales technology stacks that help revenue operations teams gain efficiency around their core day-to-day processes.
