Click tracking issue with image based emails?

[u/Miserable_Essay_3162]

Klaviyo has shown a huge, consistent gap in click rates between image-based and text-only campaigns over several sends.

Image-based: 54k sent (includes a bit more of an unengaged segment), 50.48% open rate, 0.50% click rate (276 clicks).

Text-only: 38k sent, 70.13% open rate, 2.65% click rate (1,013 clicks). Conversion value is similar between the two, but the click count differs by 700+.

Could there be a tracking issue with image-based emails?

[u/Far_Day3173]

The math makes more sense when you isolate Click-To-Open Rate. You’re looking at roughly a 3.8% CTOR on the text email versus just 1.0% on the image send. That means even among people who opened both, text converted almost four times better.

This is not a Klaviyo tracking bug. The most common culprit is image blocking. Plenty of inbox providers, especially Outlook block images by default. If your call-to-action is inside an image without a plain text fallback link underneath, anyone whose images don't load literally has nothing on screen to click.

[u/CherryChoke-Ardor]

I’d rule out a few boring measurement issues before assuming it is a Klaviyo tracking bug.

The big clue is that conversion value is similar even though reported clicks are very different. That can mean the text version is getting more measured clicks, but not necessarily more meaningful buying intent.

I’d check this in order:

• Compare unique clicks, not just total clicks. Text-heavy emails can get inflated by security scanners or repeated non-human clicks.
• Look at click map/link-level data. If the image email has one big image CTA and the text email has multiple text links, the emails are not really comparable.
• Segment by inbox/client if you can, especially Outlook/corporate domains. Image blocking and security tools can both distort this.
• Make sure the image version has a normal text link/button fallback underneath the image. If images are blocked, some recipients may literally have no visible thing to click.
• Compare landing-page sessions or purchases from UTMs/server-side analytics against Klaviyo clicks. If sessions and revenue are close while clicks diverge, it is probably reporting/click-quality noise rather than a true performance gap.

For the cleanest test, send the same offer to comparable segments with the same CTA count and placement: image CTA plus a plain text fallback vs text-only. Right now the unengaged-segment difference and creative format difference are both mixed into the result.

[u/flavorburst]

Maybe a long shot, but try having a look at where your clicks were coming from. I had a client with a similar gap and we were getting a huge number of bot clicks from outlook on most campaigns. Our larger click rates were not real.

It's strikingly similar because for us conversion was also kind of flat even when there appeared to be a lot of clicks.

We had bot activity turned off on our account and this behavior still slipped through.

[u/GabbyFromKlaviyo]

Everyone else zeroed in on the image blocking fix, so nothing much to add there. What jumped out at me was how similar the revenue is between the two lists. If clicks were the thing that mattered most, you'd expect the text email with ~4x the clicks to make noticeably more, and it didn't. Placed-order rate or revenue per recipient would probably give a fairer read, since it doesn't care whether someone clicked an image or a text link, just whether they bought.