How To Make Your Emails “Faster”

download-105512_1280Email marketing is only effective when the person receiving the message can download it to their mail reading program quickly. In an age where mobile is becoming the trending device to check emails on, the race is on to make emails faster.

There are numerous ways to increase the speed of your email messages; many of them don’t require any code and also allow messages to be read more easily on mobile devices. In an age when more emails are being read first on a mobile device compared to a desktop, this is very important.

So what are these techniques for faster emails?

1. Minimise HTML

When you are creating an email marketing message you are likely using HTML to create a stunning look. While this may create an attractive email, there are also problems with it. Every line of HTML is another line of code and chunk of memory that the receiver has to download to read your message. The more complex your code or the longer the HTML gets, the greater the memory the message will consume.

Minimising your HTML code is not difficult and there are plenty of programs out there that can help you minimise it. Alternatively, use an email marketing software system to reduce your HTML as they always have the best templates on their systems.

2. Images

Images are a major factor when it comes down to download speed. There are several aspects with images on emails that can be addressed to decrease the speed it takes to download your message.

a) Number Of Images

The more images you have on an email message the greater the memory usage. If the images are close to the top of the email copy, then these will be downloaded before the message and your audience may get bored and click off.

Also a high number of images can indicate spam and this can mean your email message is blocked from the server in the first place.

b) Size Of Images

The size of your image is of vital importance. Larger images take up loads of memory and hence longer to download and some mail clients can’t read email messages if the image is too big. The best practice is to have an image that is no bigger than 600 pixels wide, however, sometimes it is best to minimise that to just 300.

Check with your mail client whether they can do it in the program, otherwise you might have to reduce it using Paint.net or Microsoft paint.

c) Quality Of Images

Shutterstock and other stock image sites like to provide pictures and artwork of high resolution which generally take up a lot of memory. The problem is that most of your potential clients won’t have the patience to download your high quality image just to see what you’ve written at the bottom of your email.

Instead, look at lowering the quality of your image. This can be done significantly without any determinable loss to the appearance of the image.

3. Limit Content

Email marketing messages that are too long will take up a significant amount of memory. They will also be read less. Try to aim for a maximum length of between 150 and 250 words. Your main aim is to get them to your website, so have your email as an introduction rather than the entire page.

Conclusion

The speed at which your email downloads in the receiver’s mail box is vitally important. If your messages aren’t downloaded quickly, it is likely that your messages will be deleted without being read. By using the above options, you can reduce the memory taken up in the delivery of your messages to your audience’s inbox.

How fast are your emails? How big are your email messages?

Let us know in the comments.

Take Action:

  • Reduce the image size on your emails.
  • Minimise the HTML in your emails.

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