Width for Email Newsletters

Question

I know the standard width for email marketing newsletters is 600px. I know people have started to code responsive emails and they work great, however, I noticed that the standard width is still 600px, even if it is responsive. I wonder because I use Google Apps on a large monitor and I have well over 600px of available space. If I develop a responsive email newsletter is there a reason that I cannot go wider than 600px? For instance I develop a responsive newsletter at a set width of 960px. That will be re-sized if the width is lower than 960px so why limit myself to 600px?

I am looking for an answer that is not speculation but fact. Example answer could be: [Email program] does not allow for email designs over 600px and will reject the email if they are. Thus you should stick with a design, responsive or not, at 600px. Here is more information [link.]

Answer 1

Expanding on samanthasquared's answer, you could set the default to 600-640 wide and media-query it UP to 960.

Otherwise here is an example of a fluid (elastic) implementation in email. You can also set a max-width on a fluid design so that it fits 100% on screens smaller than X width only, and looks like a regular email when the screen is big enough.

The following clients do not support media queries:

• Gmail
• Outlook.com
• Yahoo**
• Lotus Notes 6.5,7,8
• Android 2.1 and older
• MS Windows Mobile 6.1,7,8
• MS Surface
• MS Outlook Exchange (Android)
• Blackberry OS5

Typically 600 is the "sweet spot" because when people read their email, the preview window is usually about that big taking into account the different page elements of each email client.

Update: Here are 2 resources for Media Query support in email clients:

http://stylecampaign.com/blog/2012/10/responsive-email-support/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/guides/mobile/

** As of March 2015 Yahoo! Mail Now Supports Media Queries (post in emailonacid.com)

Answer 2

Responsive elements only work when the email client doesn't strip out the CSS in the head, which unfortunately for email coders, Gmail does. If you want an email to take up the full width of a page and look fairly decent cross client, an elastic layout would work best, however you give up a great deal of control going that way.