SEATTLE, April 20, 2009 — Many email marketers are paying more attention to optimizing their creatives for preview panes, ensuring that emails include meaningful content in the first 300 pixels or so of height. However, some marketers are not paying enough attention to the other important inbox dimension: width.
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"While more width creates more above-the-fold real estate, the rightmost part of the message can also be cut off depending on the size of the preview or viewing pane," says Lisa Harmon, co-founder and principal of Smith-Harmon. "In general, we recommend that emails be between 600 and 700 pixels wide, but we default to 650 when we can. We were leaning toward 700 pixels until more folks started using preview panes and mobile devices. I recommend testing to see what screen resolutions are being used among your subscribers."
If 600 to 700 pixels is the sweet spot for width, then 20% of retail emails aren't optimized, according to data collected by the Retail Email Blog, which tracks the email marketing campaigns of 108 major online retailers. While the average email width was 638 pixels, widths ranged from a low 550 pixels all the way up to 787 pixels.
The reportlet is available for download from our Research Library.
"While more width creates more above-the-fold real estate, the rightmost part of the message can also be cut off depending on the size of the preview or viewing pane," says Lisa Harmon, co-founder and principal of Smith-Harmon. "In general, we recommend that emails be between 600 and 700 pixels wide, but we default to 650 when we can. We were leaning toward 700 pixels until more folks started using preview panes and mobile devices. I recommend testing to see what screen resolutions are being used among your subscribers."
If 600 to 700 pixels is the sweet spot for width, then 20% of retail emails aren't optimized, according to data collected by the Retail Email Blog, which tracks the email marketing campaigns of 108 major online retailers. While the average email width was 638 pixels, widths ranged from a low 550 pixels all the way up to 787 pixels.