EP 469 | The Real Email Metric That Drives Sales
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You’ve been obsessing over your email open rates, but they’re not the metric that actually makes you money.
In this episode, Allison Hardy breaks down why your click rate is the real MVP of your email funnel, and how to improve it without rewriting every email you’ve ever sent. If your list isn’t clicking, they’re not buying...and that’s a problem you can’t afford to ignore.
TAKEAWAYS:
Clicks—not opens—are what drive sales and signal positive engagement to email providers like Gmail.
If you’re not training your email list to click early and often, asking them to click to buy later will fall flat.
The PS section is prime real estate, don’t let it go to waste without a clickable link.
Placing your link multiple times (including near the top) boosts the chances your reader will actually take action.
How you invite the click matters just as much as where it goes—clarity, variety, and benefit-focused language are key.
Resources:
Want to learn more about creating a culture of clicking in your email funnel? Listen to episode #468.
Want to learn how to strategically set up your P.S. for clicks? Check out Profitable P.S.'s!
If your emails are getting opened but not clicked, VIP Week is where we fix the strategy behind that, and fast! Snag one of the 12 VIP Week spots available in 2026 by clicking here.
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Artist: : Benjamin Tissot
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Transcript:
Hey, hey. Welcome to episode number 469 of the Email Empire Podcast. I'm your host, Alison Hardy, and today we're talking about the most important metric in your emails. And no, it's not your open rate, it's your click rate. Now, listen, before anyone starts yelling at their phone, yes. I understand people have to open your email before they can click.
I get it. But if people are opening your emails and not clicking, then that open is basically wasted because opens don't move your business forward. Clicks move your business forward. So let's talk about why click rate matters way more than most entrepreneurs give them credit for. First reason email providers are watching what your leads do in your emails.
So when your lead clicks on a link in your email, Google sees that as a positive engagement signal. It's one of the ways that Google decides, oh, people actually want this. Let's keep delivering it. Clicks keep you out of spam folders. They keep you away from the promo tab.
Clicks, help your emails continue to land where real humans can actually see them. Second reason, and this one is huge clicking is a behavior you have to train. If the first time you ever invite someone to click a link is when you're asking them to buy something. That's a problem. Buying requires momentum and clicking is how that momentum starts.
You want to create a culture of clicking in your emails long before there's a checkout page involved.
This is something I do go deeper on in episode 468, last week's episode. So I'll make sure that the link to that episode is in the show notes if you wanna stack these two episodes together. But the short version here is your audience should already be clicking and should already have that habit of clicking before you ask them to ever spend money.
The third reason click rate matters is because clicking is how people decide if you're the right person to help them. A click might send them to a short video, a piece of content, a resource, or yes, even a sales page. Every click gives them more information.
It helps them to think and to realize, oh, this actually makes sense for me, or, yep, this is exactly the problem I'm dealing with. If they don't click the goal of that email, whatever it was, doesn't get met. No. Click means no. Next step. So now I wanna get practical and just share a couple of ways that you can increase your click rate without rewriting your entire email strategy.
So first put the link you want them to click in the ps. This is one of the most underutilized parts of an email, and it's the most powerful one. People scroll. People skim people look for the takeaway. The PS is prime real estate. I actually have a digital product called Profitable PSS that teaches exactly how to use this section strategically.
I'll link that in the show notes for you if you want help tightening this up. Second, put the link in the body of the email at least two times. Not everyone reads top to bottom, one link is easy to miss. Two gives people a second chance to engage. Third, put the link near the top of the email, and I know that this one feels uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it does work.
You don't have to earn the right to click by writing a novel first. Let people take the next step early if they're ready.
Fourth, vary how you invite people to click. Sometimes that's hyperlinked text. Sometimes it's a button. Sometimes it's a very direct sentence, telling them exactly why they should click different formats, catch different readers, and lastly, share what's in it for them if they click. This is the question, our leads are always asking themselves.
Sometimes it's a matter of positioning the link they're about to click in a more effective way. Click rate isn't just a metric, it's feedback.
It tells you whether your emails are doing their job, building the trust, creating that momentum, and moving people toward a decision. If people are not clicking, that's not a writing problem. It's a strategy problem. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, I see the issue, but I don't want to guess my way through fixing it.
Or I just wanna take this off my plate and have it figured out by someone else, or I don't have the bandwidth to learn this process. I need you to do it for me.
That's exactly what my VIP week is for. During a VIP week, I will audit your email funnel. I will identify where clicks are breaking down, and I will build a strategy that actually supports sales, not just. Fancy metrics on paper, you'll end your week with a fully fleshed out email funnel that not only attracts perfect fit leads, but also sells those leads into a program that they're excited to join.
If you want your emails to stop being ignored and start creating real momentum, you can snag one of the 12 VIP weeks I have available in 2026 through the link in the show notes. All right. That's all I have for you today. Go check your click rates and I'll see you in the next episode of the email Empire Podcast.
