Email Reach, Email Readership, and Email Engagement

Applies To:  ■ PoliteMail Desktop    ■ PoliteMail Online   □ PoliteMail O365


Version: □ 4.94   □ 4.97   5.x


You will find metric reports of Reach, Readership, and Engagement in all Campaign and Account Reports (Admin-only feature).


Email Reach

Email Reach is defined as the percent of your audience that have received and opened your message and paid a minimum threshold of attention. Those who immediately deleted or skipped the message are not counted.

The Reach metrics include Audience Attention Rate, Open Attention Rate, Open Rate, and Ignore Rate. The rate calculations are listed underneath, but if you need further explanation on what they mean, you can click on the Report Definitions tab at the top of the report.

The primary factors which impact reach are list accuracy, measurement accuracy, From address, subject line, inbox timing, and preview content. Some ways to improve your email reach is to write stronger subjects, send from a recognized From address, and let your readers know what the email is regarding in the preheader text.

Email Readership

Readership measures how much time recipients spend viewing your message, categorized into groups by minimum threshold (Read, Skimmed, Engaged, Left Open). You can see how much time recipients spent with your message, and determine if the majority of your messages were read, skimmed or left open.

The primary factors which impact readership are relevant subject lines and preview content, layout and design formatting, writing and images, message length and delivery timing. Some ways to improve your email readership is to keep your messages short and relevant, use more images than text, and determine a delivery schedule for your emails.

Email Engagement

Engagement measures interactions with your email, combining the percent of the content read together with click activity, if links are included in the message.

Factors which impact engagement include reading ease, authenticity, content relevancy, presentation and message length, and call to action and link effectiveness. Some ways to improve your email engagement is to use effective, well-placed links, have clear call to actions, and speak plainly and be authentic without the use of jargon.