To ensure marketing emails load quickly, are displayed correctly on all devices, and achieve a good delivery rate, images should comply with certain size and format specifications.
- Maximum image width in the email layout
- Recommended image and file sizes
- Suitable image formats and mobile optimization
Maximum image width for marketing emails
The recommended maximum width for images in marketing emails is 600 px. This dimension is the established standard and is reliably supported by all common email clients such as Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail.
In exceptional cases, images can be up to a maximum of 640 px wide. However, larger images often lead to display problems or unnecessary horizontal scrolling.
Recommended image and file sizes
Depending on the area of use within the email, the following image sizes have proven effective:
- Header or hero images: approx. 600 × 300–400 px
- Content images: approx. 600 × 200–300 px
- Two-column layouts: approx. 280–300 px width per image
- Logos: 120–200 px width
- Icons and symbols: 32–64 px
Ideally, the file size should be under 100 KB per image. Images over 200 KB significantly increase loading time and negatively impact user experience and engagement.
Image formats and mobile optimization
The following image formats are recommended for marketing emails:
- JPG for photos
- PNG for graphics, logos, and transparencies
- GIF for short animations in moderate file size
SVG files are not reliably supported by many email clients and should therefore be avoided.
Since the majority of marketing emails are read on mobile devices, important content should not be embedded as an image. Texts should always be present as real text in the email code, and images should be supplemented with alt texts.
In short: Images should be a maximum of 600 px wide, as small as possible in file size, and optimized for mobile devices.
