The length of the email will depend on a few factors to ensure an email marketer is best optimizing their marketing communication.
- Email Fold Line
- Newsletters vs Promotional
- Email Size (Gmail)
The Email Fold Line is anything that a user can see instantly when opening up an email without any additional effort required. Anything below the fold line would require effort to scroll down.
The thinking is that, because of the additional effort, users are less likely to scroll down if the call to action isn’t appealing.
The email fold line will be different for each device. For example, mobile renderings typically have the email fold line sit lower in the email template (600px - 800px). For the desktop or browser-based email clients, the email fold line will sit higher on the email template (300px to 400px).
It’s best practice that the call to action sits above 500px. Or within Revinate’s email composer, one to two models.
Type of content can be a big driver to email length. The two most common are promotional messaging and newsletters. Promotional messages are one that has a clear call to action. The call to action is typically a promotional offer with a large button to drive traffic to the main site. Newsletters are often content-driven material with no clear call to action. The information is intended to be engaging and informative depending on the relationship with the customer.
Overall email length should be:
- Promotional: 1 Scroll (Mobile), 2 > 3 Scrolls (Desktop & Mailclient)
- Newsletter: 2 Scroll (Mobile), 3 > 4 Scrolls (Desktop & Mailclient)
What can be challenging is that Gmail will cut off a message that exceeds 100kb - Gmail Clipped Messages. With this feature, there are inherent challenges the are unique to Gmail. Since Email Size often times equals length, a solution to avoiding clipping is to keep a message down to 5 - 6 Modules. The more added, the higher the likelihood that the message will not be fully displayed.