The best length for an email

Improve your email performance by keeping it short and sending more targeted content

Join the conversation: First time designing an email? Our Community can help! Just submit your email to the "Template Feedback" forum for some feedback before you send it out to your contacts.

Shorter emails get better opens and clicks; your contacts are much more likely to engage with your email when they trust that your email gets right to the point and your content is meaningful to them. When your email is longer, you run the risk of being put in the "I'll read it later" folder or being skimmed and having important parts of your message missed.

There is no magic formula to tell you when your email has become too long, but there are some signs to watch out for:

• You're having trouble coming up with content because you think you don't have enough.
• You can't answer what the point of your email is in a single statement.
• You rely on a table of contents or anchor links to help your contacts find the relevant content they're looking for.
• When you preview your email, you're scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, especially in the mobile view.
• Your open rates and click rates are low.

What can help shorten your email:

• Clear call-to-action - The key to a shorter email is knowing exactly what you want your contacts to do after they've read it. Give them enough information to make your expectations clear, but make your content short enough that the message is just as clear if your contacts skim it. When designing your email, try to get the call-to-action to appear towards the top of the email so your contacts don't have to scroll down to find it. If you have a lot of information to share with your audience, you can still keep your email short by inserting a Read More block to include a brief snippet and then direct readers to the full story.
  
  
   
• Contact segmentation - Think about the contacts on your list. Do all of them need all of the content in your email or are you putting a little something in there for everyone? Split your list up into different audiences and only send content that is relevant to each. You can do this yourself by breaking up your list into several smaller lists, by tagging your contacts and choosing the tags you send to, or by using our segmentation tools to group your contacts based on their engagement.
  
  
   
• Increased frequency - When your emails are shorter and you've segmented your contacts, you can send more frequent emails overall. This doesn't mean you send more frequently to the same contacts, but you're sending several shorter emails to different contact groups instead of one large email to all your contacts. The Campaign Calendar View can help you plan and keep track of your mailings.
  
  

Learn more: Your email can be short, look great, be easy to read, and be interactive all at the same time. Learn more about finding the best length for your email!

Questions?