Read Rate

email metric

01 Definition

Read Rate meaning: An estimate of how many recipients actually spent time reading an email.

Read rate estimates the share of opens where the recipient kept the email visible long enough to read it, rather than glancing and closing. Some analytics tools classify opens as read, skimmed, or deleted based on time in view. The figures are estimates and vary by how each provider measures viewing time.

Also called

read percentage

Why it matters

How Read Rate fits the work

It hints at whether people engage with your content or merely open and dismiss it, adding depth beyond a raw open count.

In context

An analytics tool reports that of 5,000 opens, 1,500 were classified as read, giving a read rate of 30 percent.

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Practical note

Read rate relies on tracking how long an email stays open, which privacy features and image blocking can distort, so different tools may report very different numbers.