Email read time: write for the 9 seconds people give an email
Date: 30 Oct 2026 · Skill harvest · Topic: HTML email design / institution letters / newsletter
What the practitioner data states (read 30 Oct 2026)
- Litmus, "Trends in Email Engagement" (blog, read): average time with an email fell from 13.4 s (2018) to 11.8 s (2020), 10 s (2021) and 8.97 s (2022). Litmus footnote: read time comes from only 17% of the opens it processed. The data dates from 2022 and Litmus itself flags the page as 2+ years old.
- Litmus Trends in Email Engagement 2022 PDF (search snippet only, PDF not opened): of timed opens, 29.4% read (>8 s), 41.1% skimmed (2–8 s), 29.5% glanced (<2 s).
- Litmus, "Read Rates" blog (read): the industry bands are glance <2 s, skim 2–7 s, read 8 s+. Only 19% of marketers track read rate (Litmus's own State of Email Analytics survey). Read rate beats open rate for picking A/B winners and for judging emails that have no button: newsletters, notices, letters.
- Litmus also sells the analytics behind these numbers, and Apple Mail Privacy Protection preloads images, so timed opens lean towards non-Apple readers. Treat the 9 s as a rough guide, not a measurement of our list.
- Reading speed: Brysbaert 2019 meta-analysis (Journal of Memory and Language; abstract read). Adults read English silently at 238 words/min for non-fiction. So 9 s ≈ 35 words and 8 s ≈ 32 words. Welsh and bilingual copy wasn't measured, so expect it to be slower.
The rules
- The first 35 words carry the whole email. Put who you are, what you want and the one fact that makes it worth answering there. Background and history go after the ask.
- For skimmers (41%): one idea per short paragraph, and the ask as a question that ends with a question mark. Put dates, catalogue refs and record IDs in a line of their own so they stand out.
- The first link or button should land within the 9-second budget in sales and newsletter mail. Letters to institutions get no button. Their "link" is the ask itself, and a single evidence URL can go lower down.
- Glancers (30%) only see the subject, preheader and greeting line. Those three must be enough to work out what the email is for.
- Don't build our own read-time tracking. A timed pixel is a tracking pixel, and the ICO's storage-and-access guidance applies PECR regulation 6 to tracking pixels in email (see existing PECR skills). Mailchimp doesn't report read time. For us, the measure is the reply (institutions) or the click to /ebooks/ (newsletter).
- For A/B tests on a tiny list, don't judge by opens (MPP inflates them; see email-metrics-mpp-bot-clicks-what-to-trust.md). Compare replies or clicks, and apply Twyman's law to any big win.
How we apply it to Cedwyn
- Hive and correspondence drafts (HubSpot): before a draft goes READY, run
python3 tools/read_budget.py draft.txt --ask "<the question>"(exit code 2 means the ask is beyond 35 words). Add one line to the changelog: "read-budget: ask at word N". This only suggests where to put the ask and never changes facts or the project lead's sign-off. The tone and editorial rules still apply. - Newsletter (Mailchimp): the first 35 words name the new door, record or e-book and link to it (tracked tag per existing UTM rules). Background goes after the link. Check with the tool on the exported HTML.
- Sales emails: the shop link sits inside the budget, with the "£4.99, PDF emailed instantly" line from the trust copy next to it. Prices never change.
- What we'll learn from: reply rate per institution letter (HubSpot) and clicks per newsletter (Mailchimp) before vs after. Log it in the Sunday growth notes. If after 6 letters and 2 newsletters nothing has moved, keep the rule as hygiene and stop measuring it.
Tool
tools/read_budget.py is our own script, stdlib only (nothing installed). It reports word count, full read time, words and seconds before the first link, the text a 9-second reader gets through, and whether --ask falls inside that. Tested on the box 30 Oct 2026 with a sample archive letter: 62 words, the ask inside the budget, the link late (flagged).
Sources
- litmus.com (read)
- litmus.com (read)
- litmus.com (search snippet only)
- litmus.com (snippet: 11.1 s 2016 → 13.4 s 2018)
- sciencedirect.com (Brysbaert 2019, abstract)
- ico.org.uk (read: tracking pixels in email fall under PECR reg 6)
Raw Markdown: email-read-time-9-second-budget-first-35-words.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json