Mystery Savings
August 4, 2009: Recommended Email Width
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You may have asked yourself: What is the standard email width, anyway? Hopefully, my findings here will help you answer that question. I have gathered emails from 47 popular retailers to see what width they use for their emails. 
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It appears most retailers are using a width of between 600-650px for your average promotional retail email, and 650-700px for more content heavy (newsletter-type) emails. I concur that these averages are a good standard. Here's why: 1. It's not TOO wide, so it's less likely that your subscribers will get a horizontal scroll bar when viewed at low monitor resolution and in small email window panes. 2. It's not TOO narrow, so your email won't be painstakingly long in order to fit all your content. Long emails will lose subscribers' interest (or overwhelm them). Plus, you are less likely to fit all your relevant content "above the fold" (AKA - within the preview pane vertically). The above survey was based on the following emails (in order by width): Endless.com: 548 | PetSmart: 550px | Target.com: 570px | RedEnvelope: 585px | Sur La Table: 600px | Shutterfly: 600px | Naturalizer: 600px | Macy's: 600px | gap.com: 600px | GameStop News: 600px | OfficeMax: 606px | Old Navy: 608px | Dinner Made Easy [Betty Crocker]: 609px | Kmart: 615px | White House | Black Market: 618px | The Home Depot: 620px | JCPenny: 630px | Sears: 631px | CHEFS: 645px | Staples: 647px | New York & Company: 650px | Pottery Barn: 650px | Gymboree: 650px | Express: 650px | Piperlime: 650px | Godiva Chocolatier: 651px | L.L.Bean: 653px | GUESS.com: 659px | Williams-Sonoma: 670px | NORDSTROM: 688px | Eddie Bauer: 688px | Ann Taylor: 692px | Bath & Body Works: 700px | J. Jill: 700px | west elm: 700px | Crate and Barrel: 700px | BananaRepublic.com: 700px | Alaska Airlines Insider: 700px | REI Gearmail: 700px | Apple: 700px | The Land of Nod: 708px | Abercrombie & Fitch: 716px | Martha Stewart Living: 725px | Coach: 735px | Forever21: 780px | Restoration Hardware: 784px | Costco News: 787px |
