Email Client Monitor’s email dwell time metric does give you a good indication of how long subscribers are engaging with your email. It captures if they truly engaged with an email (Read), looked over it once (Skimmed), or opened it to immediately delete (Abandoned).

Here's how we categorize our dwell time metrics: 

• Read: 8 seconds and above
• Skimmed: 2 - 7.9999 seconds
• Abandoned: 0-1.9999 seconds

Additional information

According to research, the average attention span is 8 seconds. This means retail marketers should limit the amount of text in their email in order to optimize their click through rate and hold the subscriber’s attention. Limiting emails to include no more than 17-19 lines of text is generally recommended.

Email Client Monitor does not measure how long it would take a subscriber to fully digest 17 lines of text, which would take over 20 seconds. 

• Read: 8 seconds and above. An email is considered Read if a subscriber reads at least 6 lines of text, which takes about 8 seconds.
• Skimmed: 2 - 7.9999 seconds.  An email is considered Skimmed if a subscriber looks at images and a few lines of text, which takes about 2-7 seconds. 
• Abandoned: 0-1.9999 seconds. An email is considered Abandoned if a subscriber looks at it for 2 seconds because takes approximately 2 seconds to open an email and delete it.

Note: If you receive the subscriber level data extract report, and see "None" in the engagement column of your report, this means that we were unable to record data for that open. If you do not receive the subscriber level data extract report, but are interested in learning more, or subscribing, please read: How to receive subscriber-level data from Email Client Monitor