Why Click-to-Open Rate Matters More Than Open Rate

The Email Marketing Podcast with Fexingo: Newsletters, Open Rates, and Subscriber Growth · May 25, 2026 · 6m · transcript

Most email marketers obsess over open rates, but Lucas and Luna argue that click-to-open rate — or CTOR — is a far more meaningful metric. In this episode, they break down why CTOR strips out subject-line manipulation and inbox placement luck to measure how good your actual email content really is. Using a concrete example — a fashion retailer whose open rate dropped from 28 percent to 20 percent after a subject-line change — they show how CTOR revealed the new subject line was actually bringing in more engaged clicks per open. They explain how to calculate CTOR, what a healthy benchmark…