How to meaningfully increase time on page for internal emails
You know the deal: not every internal comms email update is thrilling, yet keeping people informed matters. Your messages help shape culture, boost employee engagement, and answer questions. Using email measurement tools to track metrics like time on page and read rate can help you understand which messages are landing. Here’s how to send messages that more people want to read.
What is time on page?
Traditionally, time on page is a measure of how long a visitor spends actively viewing a specific webpage or URL. While marketers commonly use time on page to measure website activity, it’s also a valuable metric for internal communicators who want to know how much time employees spend reading the emails they send.
What is read time?
Read time is the calculated time it takes to read a piece of content in full. On average, a 500-word email takes about two to two-and-a-half minutes to read for most adults. bCalculating read time for emails provides important context for understanding time on page.
What’s an email read time calculator?
Read time calculators estimate how long an email should take to read based on the word count and the average adult’s standard reading speed of 200-250 words per minute.
What is read rate?
PoliteMail uses time on page and the calculated read time to categorize recipients into five categories:
- Ignored: Recipient opened an email for less than three seconds.
- Skimmed: Recipient opened an email for at least three seconds, or up to 30% of the calculated read time.
- Read: Recipient opened an email for 30-49% of the calculated read time.
- Engaged Read: Recipient opened an email for at least 50% of the calculated read time.
- Left Open: Recipient opened an email for over 150% of the calculated read time.
7 tips to increase email recipients’ time on page
1. Give readers something they want.
Think about the emails you always want to read; They all have something to offer. It might be sheer entertainment, a discount on a product you want to buy, or important information that will make your life easier. Apply this wisdom to your internal comms emails. Give your employees something that they want. Often, that means writing a useful message, an entertaining one, or ideally, one that is both.
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2. Write accessible content.
Readers won’t keep an email open if it’s difficult to understand or consume. Before sending a message, use a readability checker to see if it’s easy to read. Or ask your AI platform of choice to edit your message for readability.
On the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease (a test that measures readability on a scale from very difficult to very easy), PoliteMail recommends keeping your language at a 4th-grade level. Our benchmark data finds that “Very easy” and “easy” text achieves 20+% higher readership rates than short messages with “very difficult” text.
3. Lead with what matters most.
Employees scan your emails, so put your most important point or call-to-action in the subject line and opening sentence. Burying the lead is frustrating because your people want to know whether an email matters before continuing to read. You can use an “inverted pyramid” structure: start with the critical information, and then add details in descending order of importance. This way, even if someone only reads the first sentence, they’ll get the essential message.
4. Create surprise and delight content.
To boost your read rate, regularly incorporate unexpected “surprise and delight” content in your emails. You want to aim for content that’s a little unexpected in a corporate channel, but remains professional and aligned with your values. Think things like tasteful memes that tie to your messaging or a photo of the week featuring a pet or a WFH setup.
5. Humanize your messaging.
AI is a powerful tool for internal comms, but your people still want to hear from a human. They don’t want canned, AI-generated messages. Plus, the more they see AI, the more quickly they’ll recognize it. To keep your emails feeling human, find ways to:
- Incorporate human voice (e.g., short videos, voice memos)
- Integrate stories (e.g., employee spotlights, customer case studies)
- Make leaders more accessible (e.g., Q&As with your board, talking head videos)
6. Send skimmable content.
While time on page matters, you really just want employees to read long enough to understand and remember the message. Dense blocks of text discourage reading. It might feel immediately overwhelming, or they might think (correctly or not) that they don’t have time to read the message. And given their best intentions to read at a later time, they might not remember. Break email messages into short paragraphs, and strategically use subheadings, bullet points, numbered lists, and bold text to create visual landmarks.
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7. Keep things short and sweet.
PoliteMail benchmark data consistently show that short messages outperform longer ones, especially as frequency increases. It’s better to send shorter emails more often than more content less often. The optimal message length for the highest readership is typically under one minute of read time, which equates to roughly 250 words.
How PoliteMail can help increase your read rate
As an email measurement tool, PoliteMail can help increase your readership rates by turning employee engagement into something measurable—and therefore something you can improve. When you understand if employees are skimming, reading, or engaging with the emails you send, you can identify what’s working and what isn’t, rather than relying on assumptions.
It’s not easy work making ordinary updates compelling, but it’s important. Communication drives trust and retention. Research shows that sharing critical information breeds trust. When you take time to write engaging content, employees will reward you with their time.
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