Email performance in Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) is traditionally measured through click reports, CTR, and link-level tables. While these metrics are essential, they often leave marketers asking an important question:
Where exactly are subscribers clicking inside the email layout?
This is where email heatmaps come in.
Email heatmaps transform raw click data into visual insights, helping SFMC teams instantly understand how subscribers interact with their emails. In this practical guide, we’ll explain what email heatmaps are in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, how they work, what they can (and cannot) show, and how CRMx makes email click analysis easier and faster for SFMC users.
What Are Email Heatmaps in Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Email heatmaps are a visual representation of tracked click activity within an email.
Instead of analysing clicks as rows of URLs and numbers, email heatmaps overlay click intensity directly on top of the email design. Areas with higher engagement appear as hotspots, while low-interaction areas remain cooler or unhighlighted.
In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, email heatmaps are built using:
SFMC Job ID data
Tracked link aliases
Click and unique click metrics
CRMx uses this SFMC click data to generate accurate, layout-level visualisations of subscriber engagement.
Why Native SFMC Click Reports Aren’t Enough
SFMC click reports answer what was clicked, but not where those clicks happened visually.
Common challenges with standard SFMC reports:
Click data is presented as tables, not layouts
No visual context for CTAs, images, or sections
Hard to explain performance issues to designers or stakeholders
Time-consuming manual analysis
Email heatmaps solve this by adding visual context to existing SFMC data—without changing how Salesforce tracks clicks.
How CRMx Email Heatmaps Work with Salesforce Marketing Cloud
CRMx integrates directly with Salesforce Marketing Cloud email tracking data to produce heatmaps that are:
Accurate – every hotspot maps to a real tracked SFMC link
Visual – overlaid on the rendered email
Actionable – designed for optimisation, not just reporting
CRMx email heatmaps typically include:
Click intensity overlays
Total clicks and unique clicks per link
Click rank (top-performing CTAs)
Average CTR per element
Time-to-click insights
Journey name and journey version context
All insights are generated using existing SFMC click tracking, ensuring reliability and compliance.
What Email Heatmaps Can Show (and What They Can’t)
Understanding the scope of email heatmaps is important.
✅ What Email Heatmaps Show
Which CTAs attract the most clicks
Whether subscribers interact more with hero sections or lower content
How engagement is distributed across the email layout
Which links outperform others in the same email
Differences in click behaviour across journey versions
❌ What Email Heatmaps Do Not Show
Clicks on non-linked elements
Mouse movement or scrolling behaviour
Failed or “attempted” clicks
Rage clicks or frustration signals
Email heatmaps in SFMC are strictly based on tracked links, which ensures accuracy and avoids misleading interpretations.
Practical Use Cases for SFMC Teams
1. CTA Placement Optimisation
Heatmaps help teams quickly see whether the primary CTA is receiving the most attention—or if secondary links are distracting users.
2. Faster Email Performance Reviews
Instead of analysing multiple reports, teams can understand engagement at a glance using visual overlays.
3. Better Collaboration with Designers
Heatmaps make it easy to explain why certain sections underperform, using visual evidence rather than assumptions.
4. Journey-Level Analysis
By connecting heatmaps to journey names and versions, CRMx helps teams compare engagement across iterations and optimise journeys faster.
How CRMx Improves SFMC Email Optimisation Workflows
CRMx doesn’t replace Salesforce Marketing Cloud—it enhances it.
With CRMx Email Heatmaps, SFMC teams can:
Reduce time spent analysing click data
Make confident layout and CTA decisions
Support stakeholders with visual proof
Improve email performance without major redesigns
This leads to faster decisions, better alignment, and more effective campaigns.
When Should You Use Email Heatmaps in SFMC?
Email heatmaps are especially useful when:
CTR looks fine, but performance feels unclear
Multiple CTAs compete for attention
Stakeholders ask why something worked (or didn’t)
Journey performance needs deeper analysis
Teams want to optimise without guesswork
Final Thoughts
Email heatmaps bring clarity to Salesforce Marketing Cloud email analytics by turning click data into visual insight.
CRMx Email Heatmaps help SFMC teams understand:
What subscribers click
Where those clicks happen
Which elements truly drive engagement
If you want to move beyond spreadsheets and start optimising emails visually, CRMx provides a practical, reliable way to unlock deeper value from your existing SFMC data.
