Understanding clicks vs. impressions
Updated
by MissingLettr Team
When you open a campaign and look at the Sent tab, every post shows two numbers: clicks and impressions. These measure very different things, and knowing the difference helps you spot which posts are working and which need a rewrite.
Impressions
Impressions = how many times your post was shown on someone's screen.
The platform counts an impression whenever your content lands in someone's feed, timeline, or search results, even if they just scrolled past without engaging. The same person seeing the post twice usually counts as 2 impressions.
Think of impressions as the size of the megaphone. They tell you about reach, how widely your content was distributed.
Clicks
Clicks = how many people actually clicked through to your content.
Missinglettr tracks clicks via the shortened link in each post. Every time someone taps that link and lands on your blog or destination page, it's counted as one click.
Clicks tell you about intent: how many people cared enough to take action.
The relationship
Impressions are always (much) larger than clicks. On social media, a healthy click-through rate is typically 1–3% of impressions:
- 10,000 impressions → 100–300 clicks is normal
- 1,000 impressions → 10–30 clicks is normal
How to read your campaign analytics
Looking at the two numbers together tells a story that either one alone can't:
Pattern | What it means | What you can do |
High impressions, low clicks | Lots of people saw it, but the hook didn't land. | Rewrite the copy: the opening line isn't compelling enough to earn the click. |
Low impressions, high CTR | Small audience, but the ones who saw it engaged. | The algorithm didn't push it, but the message resonated. Try this angle again with stronger hooks. |
High impressions, high clicks | Both reach and engagement are working. | Note what made this post different. Replicate the format, image style, or hook. |
Low impressions, low clicks | Algorithm didn't push it AND it didn't earn engagement from the few who saw it. | Different topic, different angle, different time of day. |
Per-platform notes
How impressions are counted varies a bit by platform:
- LinkedIn: counts an impression whenever the post appears in a feed.
- Twitter / X: what their API calls "views" is what we display as impressions.
- Facebook: shows "reach" (unique users) and "impressions" (total times shown). Missinglettr displays the impressions figure.
- Instagram: shows impressions plus profile visits. Link clicks specifically need a link in bio or a swipe-up; only those are counted here.
Where to find these numbers in MissingLettr
- Open any Active or Completed campaign.
- Click the Sent tab.
- Each post card shows its clicks (blue) and impressions (grey) totals.
- Use the channel filter (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) at the top right of the post list to slice the numbers by platform.
- Click Per-profile analytics to see the breakdown by individual social profile: useful when you publish to multiple LinkedIn accounts or multiple Twitter handles from the same campaign.
