What Eye Tracking Reveals About How People Actually Read Your Emails

You know where subscribers click. Eye tracking tells you what they actually see before they decide to click — or don't. Philip Storey (Founder, Enchant Agency and FlowFixer) has applied eye tracking analysis to email campaigns from Starbucks, Selfridges, Versace, eBay, Netflix, and others. What the data consistently shows: most emails ask subscribers to do too much cognitive work, and attention goes exactly where designers don't intend it to. Modern eye tracking tools can simulate a 200-person study in seconds — no lab required. This session covers what the data reveals and how to act on it before your next send. What you'll learn: - Why faces in email design steal attention from content — and how image direction changes reader behavior - How fast animations cause subscribers to get stuck between frames instead of reading your message - Why three-column email layouts consistently underperform: readers focus on the left and middle columns, and the third gets ignored - The four eye tracking metrics that matter for email: focus, engagement, cognitive load, and recall - What Versace's text-heavy email (despite minimal actual copy) reveals about cognitive load — and how cutting copy improved every score - Why eBay's simple, left-aligned design produces high engagement and low cognitive demand, and what that means for your templates - Why bigger CTAs perform better, and when "less is more" has exceptions worth testing