Heatmap
A heatmap is a data visualisation tool that uses colour gradients to represent the intensity of user interactions at different points on a web page or email, showing where attention, clicks, and scrolling are most concentrated. Warmer colours indicate higher activity; cooler colours indicate lower activity. The result is an immediately interpretable picture of how users are actually engaging with your content, rather than the abstract numbers that traditional analytics provide.
In website analytics, heatmaps come in several forms: click maps show where users click, scroll maps show how far down a page users scroll before leaving, and move maps track cursor movement as a proxy for where the eye travels. In email marketing, click maps show which links and sections within an email received the most clicks, helping identify which content is generating engagement and which is being ignored entirely. Tools like Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity, and Mouseflow provide website heatmap capabilities; most email platforms provide click maps as a standard reporting feature.
For B2B marketers, heatmaps are most valuable in conversion rate optimisation work: understanding whether landing page visitors are engaging with the key elements before deciding whether to convert, or identifying which sections of a long-form email are generating the most interest. Patterns that would be invisible in row-and-column analytics data become obvious at a glance in a heatmap, making them one of the most accessible and actionable tools for improving campaign and page performance.
What types of heatmaps are there?
The main types are: click maps (showing where users click on a page, with warmer colours indicating more clicks), scroll maps (showing how far down a page users scroll before leaving), move maps or attention maps (tracking cursor movement as a proxy for where the eye focuses on desktop), and session recordings (video replays of individual user sessions that complement aggregate heatmap data with specific behavioural context).
How are heatmaps used in email marketing?
In email marketing, heatmaps typically take the form of click maps: a visual overlay on the email design showing which links received the most clicks, represented as a percentage of total clicks or total recipients. This tells you whether your primary call to action is getting the most attention, whether recipients are clicking on secondary links more than expected, and whether certain sections are generating no engagement at all.
What can a heatmap tell you that click rate data cannot?
Click rate data tells you how many people clicked something in an email or page, but not where they clicked or what they did before and after. A heatmap shows the spatial distribution of interactions: whether clicks are concentrated on your primary call to action or scattered across multiple secondary links, whether a button that looks prominent in design is actually being missed by users, and whether content near the bottom of a page is receiving any engagement at all.