When designing your email newsletter, you need to evaluate whether it will fit on the subscriber’s screen. You can’t make it too small or they won’t be able to read the text. If you make it too big, they’ll be too zoomed-in to read anything as well. In fact, that’s the best case scenario, because a newsletter might never reach the subscriber’s inbox if it’s too big.
In some cases, your email campaign may even clip, which is when an email gets cut short for being too large. The subscriber then has to click an extra button to see the rest of the email, which is something you must avoid if you can. You want the subscriber’s interaction to be seamless, so the fewer buttons they have to press to receive your message, the better.
So, what size should your email newsletter be to avoid a negative experience with your subscribers? Let’s take a look:
Width
The industry standard width for email newsletters is 600 pixels. This is because traditional computer monitors could not support resolutions higher than that. This isn’t the case anymore, but the standard is in place and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
You can get away with broader widths, but it’s not truly worth it. Not only do you want a clean, even width for your newsletter – you want to avoid angering the email client as much as possible.
For example, Gmail may not show the background colors of campaigns with a width higher than 640 pixels, and Yahoo Mail doesn’t render campaigns with a width greater than 650 pixels. Though this isn’t always guaranteed, it’s best not to risk it.
Height
You have a little more freedom with the height of your newsletter. It can be anywhere between 600 and 3,000 pixels. You’ll want to place the most important information about your campaign within the first 350 pixels, since people in general have shorter attention spans than ever. While some subscribers may scroll to the bottom and read through, not all of them will unless incentivized in the beginning, so keep that in mind.
Weight
The weight refers to the file size of your campaign. Overall, your email should be no heavier than 100kb.
If it’s heavier than that, the newsletter will have trouble getting to your subscribers’ inboxes. The email clients will have difficulty receiving an email of such size and may bounce it back to you, increasing your bounce-back rate.
Creating the Best Email Newsletter
When creating an email newsletter, always make sure to use templates. Even while knowing the correct newsletter size, it’s important that you follow the tried-and-true email marketing methods that top companies are already using. With a template, you can test multiple designs and formats to identify the most appropriate email campaign for your subscribers.
