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When creating emails, we focus on creating the best email for our audience. This often manifests itself in the curation of content before designing and creating the email. While we may agonize over subject lines, CTAs (call-to-action), and segmentation or personalization, there are a few things we often forget: email file size and email load times. Although they have similarities, they are different issues that need to be considered.
Even if it's not a particularly hot email topic, it's crucial to building the right email topic Subscriber experience. In addition to the fact that Gmail cuts off messages once they reach a certain size, the size of your email file can also determine the bandwidth required to download and view your emails. If your subscriber can't see your email or takes forever to load on mobile devices, this is unlikely engage or convert.
Read on to find out how to overcome the hurdles of email file size and load times.
How is the file size of an email defined?
There are two ways to measure the size of an email file:
- The weight of the code
- Email weight loaded
The weight of the code
We're talking about bytes in email HTML, with each character being between 1 and 2 bytes in size. This includes HTML tables, text, links, etc.
Email weight loaded
This includes everything that is necessary render completely Your email. This includes the HTML code of your email – as mentioned above – as well as all your assets, such as: PicturesFonts and videos.
What factors affect email file size?
A number of factors can affect the size of the email file. These could include:
- Length of the email
- Too many pictures
- Large image sizes
- Uncompressed images
- Animated GIFs
- Coding style
- Custom fonts
The first and most obvious factor is the length of the email. Sending an email with dozens of product images and descriptions will likely result in a large email. The same applies if you don't compress your images. Putting just one large image throughout your entire email can result in a very large email.
Another popular culprit for voluminous emails is animated GIFs. Each frame in an animated GIF is essentially its own image. The more frames your GIF has, the heavier it will be. Other factors that affect email file size include coding style and custom fonts. A simple email with long paragraphs is rarely a problem. However, we don't recommend sending an entire novel via email.
Why is the size of an email file important?
Both types of email file sizes have been covered previously.
First, the weight of the HTML is important because Gmail truncates messages that weigh more than 102 KB.
Second, the loaded size of your emails determines how much bandwidth is required to download and view your emails. Larger emails take longer to fully render, which can be a problem, especially when it comes to email interaction.
Then there is the user experience. Subscribers won't see the full story you're trying to convey if heavy images are still loading. Things get even more difficult on mobile devices, where loading images can make it seem like you've sent a blank email. The same goes for custom fonts. While fonts are loading, the text in your email is not rendered.
Does email file size affect deliverability?
Sending an email with HTML weight less than 100KB has no effect Deliverability. In some cases, sending an email larger than 100KB can have an impact on deliverability, but this may not be due to size alone. Rather, it could be poor customer experience and poor engagement issues. In general, keeping emails under 80KB whenever possible will help reduce some of these problems.
What is the ideal email file size? Has the rise of mobile devices impacted the ideal file size?
The ideal file size varies. For example, if you're targeting subscribers in a country with slow internet, your ideal file size will be smaller than someone targeting US subscribers.
We analyzed the average email file size and found the following:
Emails not optimized for mobile devices:
- Average HTML weight: 45 KB
- Average image weight: 2.24 MB
Mobile-optimized emails:
- Average HTML weight: 53 KB
- Average image weight: 2.7 MB
It's interesting to note that mobile-optimized emails tend to be larger than non-mobile-optimized emails. In HTML, this makes sense because creating a mobile-friendly email requires more code (think media queries, for example).
How can I determine the size of my email file?
The quickest and easiest way to view the size of your email file is… To Use litmus! You can view the image size and loading times to determine the total file size.
This will give you the weighting of the HTML. You can then measure the size of all images in your email. Add everything up and voila!
What techniques can I use to reduce my file size?
The best way to reduce the size of your email file is to compress your images. You may also consider using fewer images. When using animated GIFs, remove unnecessary frames. This will significantly reduce the GIF size.
Some great tools Litmus recommends for this are:
If you can get your team on board, use it Web safe fonts. Not having to download a custom font is preferable.
As far as coding goes, you shouldn't create emails that show or hide large blocks of content based on media queries. This puts unnecessary strain on your emails. Instead, focus on email that adapts seamlessly to desktop and mobile clients.
What is an email load time?
Email load time determines how long it takes for your email to fully load the HTML code, fonts, and images. Essentially, it's the time it takes to load your emails.
What factors affect email load time?
Email loaded weight has a big impact on email load time. This, along with the speed of your internet connection, determines the overall email loading time.
What influence do images have on loading time?
Images contained in an email must be loaded from somewhere. These images are hosted on a server and unfortunately not all servers are the same.
The longer it takes your server to serve an image, the longer your email will take to load. This can be a problem if you're sending an email to a large list where thousands (or millions!) of subscribers open your email at the same time.
Reasons for slow loading of email images:
- Too many pictures
- Image size too large
- Images are not compressed
- Images are not optimized for the web
- Images are not optimized for certain ESPs
- Incorrect file format
The best way to ensure email images load quickly is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This helps reduce latency and overall load times. The faster images load, the faster the email will render.
How can I determine the loading time of my emails?
By far the easiest way to determine this is: Test your email through litmus. You can see the overall image size and loading time.
What techniques can I use to shorten the loading time of my emails? Are there any disadvantages to these techniques?
The easiest way to reduce loading time is to reduce the weight of loaded emails, as mentioned above. This includes using compressed images or fewer images and removing frames animated GIFs.
Another option is to improve your infrastructure, for example by using a lower latency CDN. The challenge is that it's often impossible for marketers to get buy-in for such things.
Sending not-too-long emails with compressed images is sufficient in 99% of cases.
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
