Click-to-Open-Rate (CTOR) Calculator and Formula

Click-Through-Rate OR Click-To-Open-Rate?

Many Email Service Providers (ESPs) choose to display the click rate of your email campaigns as either Click-Through-Rate (CTR), or Click-To-Open-Rate (CTOR).

Which should you report on? We suggest reporting on both but whichever you go for, you should align your reports with your goals. Otherwise, how can you measure success?

It is important to understand the true click engagement rate from both ratios so you get a more comprehensive overview of the success of the campaign. That said, we sway to CTOR. We suggest, that knowing the rate of unique clicks against the unique openers gives a clearer picture of how the content alone is performing and whether it is enticing and engaging enough for the recipient.

Now, if your ESP doesn’t display the CTOR, Email-Postman has provided a simple calculator and Excel formula below. All you need to do is enter the campaign’s unique clicks and unique opens in the form and you’ll get the CTOR percentage.

If however, you have a large amount of campaign data you’re looking to get the CTOR for, here is the excel formula:

The next step is to add a new column to your campaign data titled “CTOR,” and enter the formula, replacing the cells in the brackets.

=(Unique clicks/unique opens)*100

Replace “unique clicks” with the relevant unique clicks field
Replace “unique opens” with the relevant unique opens field

For example:
Email Unique clicks Unique opens CTOR (%)
Jan 350 2550 =(B2/C2)*100
Feb 200 1950
Which will then display like this:

Email Unique clicks Unique opens CTOR (%)
Jan 350 2550 13.73
Feb 200 1950