The user experience is very important to take care of the company's image and can be negatively affected if our email marketing does not take into account the loading time of the messages. Optimising the emails that are sent is essential so that, without affecting the design, the recipients can read them immediately. When the reading does not flow, the user may get tired and eventually unsubscribe.
To prevent this from happening, we suggest techniques that take care of the experience and add engagement by reducing the weight of your campaigns.
Prioritise mobile-friendly design
This recommendation serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, you ensure that the experience of those who read your messages on mobile devices is satisfactory. On the other hand, you reduce the weight of the HTML and CSS code by making it more efficient, for example by simplifying the design to a single column, so that it loads faster and subscribers can read your communications quickly.
Prioritising responsive design eliminates redundant elements that can unnecessarily load the code. It also keeps it below the 102 kb that would make Gmail cut the message, which would not allow users to view it in its entirety from this email manager.
Limit the use of web fonts
The choice of typeface for email marketing is as much a branding decision as it is a user experience decision. On the one hand, system fonts are faster than web fonts, but on the other hand, they can be too conventional. Using Google Fonts, for example, is a way to make the message visually differentiating but, as they are external downloads, it can slow down the proper display.
When designing the template, it is important to ensure that the brand identity is not lost and that it does not affect the speed at which communications load. Therefore, we recommend limiting the use of web fonts and always provide replacement fonts so that the message remains legible while they load.
Give more importance to the text
A good design for an email marketing campaign has to balance the use of photos and text. It is a mistake to include too many images, but it can also be a mistake not to use any at all. A recommended percentage is 60% for text. Giving it more importance contributes to higher deliverability because it passes the anti-spam filter better and to a better user experience for those who have them blocked.
One way to make text more prominent is to let it shine in titles, subtitles and buttons. Often the desire to send a more visual or creative campaign leads to the inclusion of graphic elements that do not always add enough to justify gaining weight in the message, such as with special typography that requires the use of images or some additional resource for a CTA that might as well be an HTML symbol.
Optimise all images
Once it is clear how many images are going to be used in the message, it is necessary to optimise them to prevent them from weighing too much. Acrelia's campaign editor allows you to visualise in a single graph the total weight and detail of each of the images, along with the loading time according to different speeds.
Every millisecond counts and the best technique to reduce them is to adjust the weight of the images. First, by reducing the size because it is often possible to create or download them from photo banks at an unnecessarily large width for emails. Then, by adjusting the resolution because 72 dpi is sufficient to view them on screen and not the 300 needed to print at good quality. And finally, using the appropriate extension as some apply some compression and so you can save a few kb.
Control the weight of files
If it were a personal message sent from an email manager, deleting attachments would be the quickest way to save a few kb or even mb of weight. This is usually the reason for most bounces because there are servers that have a weight limit on the files they accept and also because it causes inboxes to be saturated.
When it comes to email marketing sent from professional platforms, attaching files is a bad practice that affects deliverability because it can be considered spammy. It is less dangerous to send a download link from an external provider, such as a cloud service, or from your file sharing system.
