Bananatag's Read Time feature is part of all current Internal Comms plans, and shows you what portion of your audience glanced at, skimmed or read your internal newsletters and other emails.

 

Here's how Read Time data looks inside an employee email report inside Bananatag

 

How Read Time works for employee emails

 

Read Time measures how long recipients view each email, by consistently connecting to the tracking pixel added to the email added by Bananatag, as long as the email is being actively viewed.

 

Read Time uses the same tracking pixel that's already a part of every email sent with Bananatag, and the same technology that the platform already uses to measure how and when emails are being opened by employees.

 

How Read Time data is displayed

Once Read Time events are recorded, the Read Time view is immediately calculated and displayed on the email report. The

 

Email glances (<3 seconds)	Email opens that result in the message being viewed for at least one second, but not more than two seconds are counted as glances.
Email skims (3-8 seconds)	Email skims are recorded when a message is viewed for at least three seconds, but not more than eight seconds.
Email reads (8+ seconds)	Emails opens that result in the message being viewed for more than nine seconds are recorded as read.

 

What’s required to capture Read Time data

 

There are two main requirements for capturing Read Time data inside your organization:

 

1. A subscription to a current Bananatag Internal Comms plan
2. A recipient audience that is primarily using Outlook on Windows

 

A note on the limitations of Read Time when using a proxy servers

A proxy server acts as an intermediary between the client and the server they are requesting resources from, and may prevent Read Time events from being captured.

Since Read Time works by holding the connection open and counting until the recipient leaves the email, when a recipient is directly connected to Bananatag's servers the system measures Read Time with the standard tracking pixel.

With a proxy in place, it is the proxy server that makes the request to Bananatag. When a recipient is connected via a proxy server, the recipient may leave the email and cancel the request to the proxy server for the tracking pixel. In this case, the proxy server may not pass that information along to the Bananatag servers and continue holding the connection open until the request times out.

 

A test of your organization’s email sending environment

To ensure accurate metrics, Bananatag will perform a test of your organization's sending environment, measuring the resulting Read Time data, and evaluating its reliability. This process happens transparently as you send regular emails.

 

If you are interested in testing your system for Read Time, please contact our your Account Manager