Get deeper insights into how recipients engage with your emails beyond simple open rates. Instead of just knowing whether someone opened your email, you can now see how long they spent reading it and categorize their engagement as "Read," "Skimmed," or "Glanced." This feature helps you understand the true quality of your email engagement and identify which content resonates most with your audience.
By the end of this guide, you'll know how to access your attention tracking data, interpret the engagement levels, and use these insights to improve your email marketing strategy.
How Email Attention Tracking Works
The feature works by embedding a tracking GIF image at the very top of each email. This image is a single-pixel, invisible asset that the recipient never actually sees.
When a recipient opens the email, the tracking GIF is requested from SendX servers. Instead of serving a static file, our servers initiate a long-polling connection tied to that specific request. While the email remains open, the GIF request continues to stream small data packets back to our servers for up to 8 seconds.
Read: If the connection persists for 8+ seconds
Skimmed: If the connection drops between 2–8 seconds
Glanced: If the connection ends in under 2 seconds
The assumption here is that once the long-polling connection is closed, the user has either closed the email or navigated away, signaling the end of their active reading session.
Technical Limitations
Gmail and proxy-based clients: Gmail (and several other providers) proxy images through their own servers. This means the tracking GIF is loaded once and cached by Google’s proxy. The connection remains artificially alive, even after the recipient has closed the email. As a result, Gmail reads often appear longer than they actually are.
Image blocking: Some recipients disable images in their email client. In this case, the tracking GIF is never requested, and engagement data cannot be recorded.
Before You Begin
Before setting up email attention tracking in SendX, make sure you have:
Administrative permissions: Ensure you can enable add-ons in your SendX account settings.
At least one email campaign ready: You'll need to send a campaign to see engagement analytics data.
Understanding of email client limitations: Be aware that some email clients like Gmail may not provide this tracking data.
Existing contact lists: Have subscribers to send campaigns to, so you can gather meaningful engagement data.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Enable Engagement Analytics
Go to Settings > Add-ons
Find and enable the Engagement Analytics add-on.
Send a Campaign
Create and send your email campaign as usual.
View the Engagement Report
After the campaign is sent, go to Reports.
Click on View Report for the relevant campaign.
Scroll to the Engagement Analytics section.
You’ll see a pie chart displaying the percentage of contacts who Read, Skimmed, or Glanced on your email reports.
Understand the Metrics
Hover over the chart for definitions:
Read: Email viewed for 8+ seconds.
Skimmed: Email viewed for 2–8 seconds.
Glanced: Email viewed for less than 2 seconds.
Tips & Best Practices
Here are some helpful ways to make the most of your engagement analytics data:
Enable before sending campaigns: Turn on Engagement Analytics before creating campaigns to ensure all future sends are tracked.
Test different content lengths: Experiment with shorter vs. longer emails to see what keeps readers engaged longer.
Use engagement for segmentation: Create segments based on reading behavior to send more targeted follow-up campaigns.
Monitor trends over time: Track whether your Read/Skim/Glance ratios improve as you optimize your content.
Combine with other metrics: Use attention tracking alongside open rates and click rates for a complete engagement picture.
Troubleshooting Common Issues
Engagement analytics provides valuable insights, but you might encounter some data interpretation challenges. Here are solutions to common questions:
Problem: "I don't see the Engagement Analytics section in my campaign reports."
Solution: First, ensure you've enabled the Engagement Analytics add-on in Settings > Add-ons. The feature only tracks campaigns sent after the add-on is activated, so older campaigns won't show this data.
Problem: "My engagement data seems lower than expected."
Solution: Remember that some email clients like Gmail don't provide this tracking data, so your actual engagement may be higher than reported. Focus on trends and improvements rather than absolute numbers.
Problem: "Most of my contacts show as 'Glanced.’ Is this normal?"
Solution: Yes, this is common in email marketing. Many people quickly scan emails (under 2 seconds). Use this data to improve your subject lines and email design to encourage longer reading times.
Problem: "The engagement analytics data isn't updating or seems stuck."
Solution: Engagement data may take some time to process after sending a campaign. Wait a few hours and refresh the report. If data still doesn't appear, verify the add-on is properly enabled.
Next Steps
Now that you're tracking email engagement, here are simple ways to use this data to improve your campaigns:
Subject Line Optimization: Create compelling subject lines that encourage people to not just open, but actually read your emails. Check out this collection of subject lines for inspiration.
Email Design Best Practices: Learn how email layout and formatting can encourage longer reading times. Here are some templates to take inspiration from.