How wide should your marketing emails be?

I’ll be writing about my journey through
the wild world of online marketing.

One question recently came up…

How narrow should your emails be? How many
characters wide should your online
marketing emails be?

I hadn’t thought much about that. Various
email experts have taught me to beware or
long paragraphs, but there wasn’t much
discussion on the width of an email…

Some recommend 35-42
characters. This is so the eyes don’t have
to travel too far from left to right like
they’re watching a tennis match!

Others recommend a 345-pixel
width which converts to about 42
characters.

Google’s Bard AI says: “Aim for 45-75
characters per line on both desktop and
mobile. This ensures easy reading without
requiring horizontal scrolling. Keep in
mind that font size affects line length.
Adjust your width accordingly to maintain
your target range.”

Chat GPT says: “…a common recommendation
is to design emails with a width of around
500-600 pixels.” This converts to 63-75
characters.

Here’s a way to easily measure characters,
just type out 1 to 0 and that is 10
characters. Copy and paste and you get 10
characters at a time. Here’s what 42
characters look like:

123456789012345678901234567890123456789012

What do you think?

Guess what? This entire post has been done with
under 42 characters!

An easy way to format your email width is this nifty
website: https://word-wrap.net/go/.

I also wanted to see how wide can an email get. I used four popular email programs on my Windows 10 PC with a screen size of 1920 x 1080 pixels (width x height).

Google Gmail: 183 characters writing or 170 characters viewing.

Yahoo! Mail: 121 characters (with ad window on right). 143 characters (without ad window on right).

Microsoft Outlook (standalone on Desktop): 249 characters before it starts to scroll to the right at 11-point Calibri.

Microsoft Outlook Web App: 141 characters.

So you can go pretty wide if you choose!

P.S. Here’s what the various widths look like…

35 character minimum width recommendation by John Thornhill:

12345678901234567890123456789012345

42 character minimum width recommendation by John Thornhill and Igor Kheifets:

123456789012345678901234567890123456789012

Yahoo! Mail: 121 characters (with ad window on right).

1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901

Microsoft Outlook Web App: 141 characters.

123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901

Yahoo! Mail: 143 characters (without ad window on right).

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123

Google Gmail: 170 characters viewing.

12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890

Google Gmail: 183 characters writing.

123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123

Microsoft Outlook (standalone on Desktop): 249 characters before it starts to scroll to the right at 11-point Calibri.

123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789