The preliminary results are in, and they are alarming.

Broadcast email vendor EmailLabs has invented a way to measure the length of time HTML email messages are viewed by recipients before they click on a hotlink in the message.

Last October EmailLabs measured this 'read time' across millions of messages sent by their more than 300 clients to permission lists (i.e. people who had signed up for and were expecting to get the email).

'Our initial data indicate that, on average, readers are spending 15-20 seconds on each email they open,' says Loren McDonald, EmailLabs VP Marketing.

'Sometimes that’s because they are so thrilled with the content that they immediately click on a link, and sometimes it’s because they close the email very quickly.' Either way, marketers have precious little time to grab readers’ attention with their creative.   

Just how much are recipients seeing in those 15-20 seconds?

Alarming Research Results: Average Email Open Time is 15-20 Seconds -- Recommendations for Emailers Posted by: DTB at 10:37 PM  |  Permalink