What is the 'standard' size for an e-mail invite?

@GCarlD

Well-Known Member
Hi guys,

I have been asked to design an invitation that is to be sent out via email and viewed online, on screen only. With all the different device sizes, I know there isn't a specific size, but are the any recommendations of a size range to aim for? I have read online that anything between 450-600px wide is the kind of range to go for (by whatever high obviously). I was thinking of setting up my artboard at 550px wide by 750px+ high. Does that sound about right in this day and age?

Thanks for any tips!
 
who's it going to, is it primarily phone users or is it going to people who use laptops/tablets... can you not do a responsive design?

I don't do much email stuff though if I'm honest
 
I would image all devices, so tablet, phone, desktop etc. But primarily desktop/laptops.

No responsive design, as it is just a quick job.
 
most of them should scale to fit the screen I would have thought....so I'd just work around what you think works best
 
I was thinking the same thing. Hopefully my thinking of 550px wide should be about right? If not, it can easily be adjusted.

Guess I'll have a better idea once I test it out but was just wondering if anyone could give me a heads up.
 
Most email designs I do are 640px wide. An ideal solution would be a responsive layout, but I know even skilled developers who are tearing their hair out trying to get them through Litmus.
 
Is there a reason for 640px in particular?

I was originally going to do it at 600px wide. I might bump it back up. Cheers.
 
My experience is that the emails are not responsive. The only software I've found to be responsive is Customer Minds, where you build a responsive template.

Primarily I sent at 800px, and given the response rate and the stats, most were on laptops, not tablets, mobiles etc. Then again it was very business focused. Perhaps a lot of responses were on a desktop.

If it's a one off.. then no harm in having the web fallback option larger and more prominent.
 
Anywhere between 600px and 640px is normally ok. The main reason is that's an ok size for most desktop and tablet readers, and if you half it you get 320px which is ok for most smartphones to handle. A responsive solution would be best so as not to just scale everything by ~50% but it's still not 100% supported across all devices.
 
Thanks guys, I've gone for 600px wide as that was my original thinking before reducing it to 550px. Can always enlarge if needs be but I'm sure 600px will be fine.
 
Ok, how do I go about adding a clickable hyperlink? I have created the design in Illustrator, I have sent the client a watermarked jpeg for them to check over, and they have asked for the web address to be hyperlinked. Is it simply a matter of saving the design as a PDF in which the URL automatically becomes a hyperlink? The reason I wanted to have it as a Jpeg was so that the invitation can be embedded into the body of the e-mail, rather than it being a downloadable attachment. But I guess it doesn't really matter.

What do you guys think? Am I right in thinking PDF? Or is there another option / solution?
 
I have sent them an image (jpeg) for them to check everything over, but the actual design was created in Illustrator.
 
But is the final email going to be coded in HTML or are they just planning on sticking the image into an email?
 
I had originally understood that it would just be an attachment they send around or have in the body of the email, but last minute they sent me a url to include in the design, and have just asked for it to be a hyperlink. Just seeing what my options are at this point. I'm allergic to coding but surely creating one hyperlink can't be difficult?
 
You just hyperlink the entire image in the email body.

True, but I would also like to look into the HTML option though, as they have requested the actual URL to be hyperlinked.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'll continue Googling in the meantime.
 
Mailchimp free account allows you to send out to 2000 people for free. Bit limited on the reporting side of things.

You'd have to rebuild the entire thing in Mailchimp though. And there may be limitations to how it's designed, as email campaigns tend to be tables, not sure if they have gone HTML5, as most email clients are not.

But you do get a HTML compliant webpage to view if the email client fails to read it properly (or people have images turned off in emails by default).

You'd also have to upload their database to Mailchimp. Doing this the database needs to be pristine, correct names, titles, email addresses etc.
 
I already have a Mailchimp account that I never use but having to upload their database to Mailchimp seems a step too far for what it's worth.

What it is, is an invitation that I have designed for a client who got the job from one of their customers, so my client is like the middleman.

Is Mailchimp the best way to go about it for HTML then? I've used it before a few years ago for some self-promo, so it shouldn't take me too long to get to grips with it. Not sure how to go about uploading their database to Mailchimp though??
 
http://kb.mailchimp.com/lists/growth/import-subscribers-to-a-list

http://kb.mailchimp.com/lists/growth/format-guidelines-for-your-import-file

I'd imagine it would be best way to build an email template. I've tried doing it before in Outlook using tables, it was very fidgety, and went to mobile devices it was all over the place.

There are other ones too.

For example, Campaign Monitor would give you an option to reply through a form if you're attending or not. You'd generate that report and get a list of attending/not attending.

But CM is a bit expensive. Not sure if you can do that with MailChimp though.
 
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