Hello Skinny
May 05 2009
Just how wide should and email be? I know that everyone builds them a little different when it comes to girth, but I have not seen many under 300 px wide. This one in point is 265 px wide. So skinny I thought for a moment that maybe I had a rendering issue. But alas I scrolled down and found the rest.
Now I see lot of European email marketers roll it thin, but in my opinion they are running it way too narrow for the US. Now Icebreaker is a NZ based company with new North America HDQs in PDX and I might need to walk up there soon and give them an hour on changing the approach to the US audience.
Why? Well ake a look. They left so much on the table. Typcially we see emails between 500 and 610 px wide in design. Over twice the width of this email. If they would have only looked to stretch the body out they would not have driven the actual product of this ecom email so far down, well below the fold.
The header image was engaging but there was nothing to do with it. Once you got to the actual product it was a 4 by grid and little copy and no actional buttons in site. Time to get the button genie out and create some Homer Simson-esque button pushing desires in the US audience.
Now I love Icebreaker as a whole, amazing clothing and the site (if you have not seen it) does something I wanted to do for a Natural Foods company some time back… they source trace back every garmet sold to the exact farm that it was sourced from. Amazing.
So skinny — > Good or bad? You know my take.
- Posted by Dylan Boyd
- @dtboyd
- at 8:03 AM
Published in Best Practices, E-Mail Marketing, Email Design, eMail Marketing Optimization
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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May 6th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Dylan over at The Email Wars has a nice post about emailers outside of the US and their use or lack thereof width in their email creative. I am with Dylan on this one…I like them wide as I do believe that they are leaving some valuable real estate on the table.
A great invention for you real techie types out there would be a way to create/code a template simliar to a liquid layout where the width of the email adjusts to the user screen……yea..that would be sweet.
http://thescrappyemailmarketer.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/i-like-them-fat/
May 7th, 2009 at 1:37 am
[...] sein. Dylan Boyd, Autor des Blogs TheEmailWars.com hat beispielsweise vorgestern im Posteingang ein Mailing von Icebreaker gefunden, das angeblich lediglich 265 Pixel breit war. Sieht mir eher wie ein “Fehler” [...]
May 8th, 2009 at 3:24 am
Hi Dylan,
Here over in Europe, the rule is not to use this sort of skinny mails, I work regularly in Belgium, Netherlands and FRance and there the rule is most of the time to use around 600 px wide. The only thing I can imagine is that those mails would also be “readable” in 3G mobile phones, but even than, you should have this filtered out in your database and create a 3G accepted email. You can’t give the rest of your database a bad run for their money because you send to mobile phones… so I fully agree on what you say and a pity for the brand, as the call to action (the product images, will go below the fold as the width of the email is so skinny)
Kind regards
Hans Smellinckx
http://www.onlinemarketingmanager.be