Tracking your unique click through rate can help you maximize your email marketing effectiveness. In our List Segmentation article, we look in to how to track your open rates and your click through rates.

If your email marketing message only has one link, it’s pretty simple to see if your readers are engaged and if you need to make any changes. It could be as simple as changing your call to action and/or the placement of your link.

But what if you have multiple links in your messages? What if you have multiple offers? How do you track the unique click through rate for each link in each message?

Your Sent, Opened, and Clicked (SOC) report includes the “Link Heatmap” which is a great way to track multiple links when your email marketing message has more than one link.

Example: Alternate Mode has many links to various offers, video tutorials, announcements, etc in their newsletter. Knowing how many clicks they got is fine. Our Link Heatmap lets them see which links readers are clicking.

Knowing which links were clicked and if they were clicked repeatedly will help you get a much more detailed idea of how effective your email marketing message is. If one of your offers isn’t getting a good click through rate, perhaps it can be moved further up in the copy or you can try a different call to action.

Want to see if images or text links get more activity? Include both in your message and track your results.

The best way to test is to change only ONE element. The placement OR the call to action. This lets you dial in to the results to see what was working and what wasn’t.

A quick word when it comes to tracking the unique click through rate compared to industry averages: Ignore averages. The only results that matter are your numbers in your campaigns. Industry averages cover a wide variety of industries, techniques, and strategies that may or may not apply to your situation.

Start by looking at what your Open rate and Click rate is. Then, begin testing to see how you can improve your results. With some testing, tweaking, and patience, you can learn to maximize your return on your email marketing and that is your #1 goal.