[Updated statistics on March 22, 2011]
E-mail marketing—the ethical/non-spam sort—remains one of our most important and profitable marketing tools. E-mail marketing is still far more important than social media. A recent aggregation of Dirigo data found that 21.8% of sales activity was directly attributed to newsletters or promotional e-mail campaigns. Non-direct attribution (abnormal sales volume adjacent to e-mail marketing that does not originate from tracking links or cookied computers) is known to be much higher. Bear in mind that Dirigo is heavily focused on direct response marketing. Pure play refers to companies that only advertise on the internet or by e-mail.
We pay close attention to internet usage. Usage statistics provide clues on how to design websites, webcasts, newsletters, etc. Our goal when designing interactive media is to always be as inclusive as possible. In Q1 2008 Dirigo moved to 964px as our standard for website width.
Display Resolution resarch from the Pew Internet Project and the W3C*:
|
Date
|
Higher
|
1024x768
|
800x600
|
640x480
|
Unknown
|
|
Jan-11*
|
85.1%
|
13.8%
|
0.6%
|
0%
|
0.5%
|
|
Jan-10*
|
76%
|
20%
|
1%
|
0%
|
3%
|
|
Jan-09
|
57%
|
36%
|
4%
|
0%
|
3%
|
|
Jan-08
|
38%
|
48%
|
8%
|
0%
|
6%
|
|
Jan-07
|
26%
|
54%
|
14%
|
0%
|
6%
|
|
Jan-06
|
17%
|
57%
|
20%
|
0%
|
6%
|
|
Jan-05
|
12%
|
53%
|
30%
|
0%
|
5%
|
|
Jan-04
|
10%
|
47%
|
37%
|
1%
|
5%
|
|
Jan-03
|
6%
|
40%
|
47%
|
2%
|
5%
|
|
Jan-02
|
6%
|
34%
|
52%
|
3%
|
5%
|
|
Jan-01
|
5%
|
29%
|
55%
|
6%
|
5%
|
|
Jan-00
|
4%
|
25%
|
56%
|
11%
|
4%
|
So what about e-mail?
Is it time to move to a higher resolution (e.g. more horizontal real estate)? The answer is no. It is still a best practice to design e-mail at 550-650px wide.
Most e-mail newsletters are designed with a fixed width as opposed to a variable or full width. That’s because most e-mail clients and web-based e-mail applications don’t use the full width of your screen for displaying the message. Whether it’s the menu in Hotmail, Yahoo, or AOL, controls within MS Outlook or Microsoft Exchange, or ads in Gmail, a good chunk of screen real estate is already being used. The reading pane (right or bottom) typically uses 40% of the screen real estate. Remember, your recipients are busy and impatient, so horizontal scroll bars are even more of a no-no in e-mail than a web page.
Based on a sampling of e-mail that we receive we’ll continue to design at 600px wide as our design standard. In about 12 months we’ll post another look. As wide-screen displays replace older square displays we expect that e-mail width will increase.
Here is a small random sample of the Dirigo March 2010 e-mail width review data. As you can see there is no real standard. The mode average (the number that occurs most often) is close to 600.
Width e-mail Sender (Type)
650 WS_FTP
587 Vital One
600 Sun Microsystems
754 Microsoft (Windows 7 RC check-in e-mail)
1024 Microsoft (Registration e-mail)
578 Microsoft (Registration thank you e-mail)
600 Longtail Video
602 Ipswitch File Transfer
660 Intermedia
600 GoGrid
600 SeriousEats.com (newsletter)
601 eFax
636 ClickInks
620 Neodynamic Barcode Professional
654 L.L.Bean (newsletter)
616 Ad:Tech (confrence update)
610 Adobe (newsletter)
558 American Express (fraud e-mail)
700 Apple (Inside Apple newsletter)
716 Better Business Bureau of New England
750 Borders
780 Bruce Clay Inc
620 Carbonite
688 Dun & Bradstreet
728 Datamonitor
560 Dell (Order shipment confirmation)
600 Discover Card (Payment due notice)
604 Diskeeper (Marketing e-mail)
550 DM News (Newsletter–heavy text)
600 Dutch Gardens
604 Evite.com
830 Expedia.com
604 Fetchdog.com
602 FTD (Special Offer–heavy image)
600 GoDaddy.com
602 Headsets.com
700 Hitwise.com
792 Internet.com
580 JetBlue.com
650 LegalZoom.com
550 PhotoStamps.com
650 Potterybarn.com
550 Sandals.com
730 Southbeachdiet.com
600 Southwest Airlines
604 TD Ameritrade
722 Time Warner Cable Business Class
670 Williams-Sonoma