Email Marketing Tool

JPiche
Member

Responsive - Animated .gif size?

SOLVE

How do I accommodate for responsive design, if I'd like to include an animated .gif in my email?

 

We are prepping a holiday e-card to send out to contacts and my designer is asking what size the file should be. Last year she created an animated .gif that we sent out via Constant Contact. My initial reaction was 600 px wide as we've done in the past, but I don't understand how responsive design is impacted by file size. Can someone clarify for me please?

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Dev_TRooInbound
Solution
Participant

Responsive - Animated .gif size?

SOLVE

The ideal size of GIF should be upto 1mb. GIF is kind of Image format. There is a limit for Image file size in the email, but no specific limit for GIF. A good practice is to keep it upto 250 pixels. Many ESP's consider Gif under 250 pixels. As decreasing file size leads to increased loading speed. Email with a lot of content may take a lot of time in loading all its contents which may make you lose your leads due to their loss of interest.

 

GIF can be optimized using 4 simple tactics:


Cropping: Focus on the part that’s animated and crop the rest.
Remove framing: Keep it simple and focused, just like the totality of your email.
 Animate only part of the picture that you need: Use the layers in Photoshop that will allow you to isolate animated parts only.
Reduce colors: The reduction is color use can decrease the file size.

 


A responsive design is faster to load and pleasant to the eye of the viewer.

 

For the responsive design with images, a change in CSS should be done:

 

In CSS,  img { max-width: 100%; } used instead use width: 100% because every image will load in its original size, unless the viewing area becomes narrower than the image’s original width.

 

While the above is a great quick fix and a good start to responsive images and file size.

 

If your problem is resolved, marked it as Solved.

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3 Replies 3
Jon_McLaren
Top Contributor | Platinum Partner
Top Contributor | Platinum Partner

Responsive - Animated .gif size?

SOLVE

600px wide for a full width image is correct this same thing applies to gifs, but generally with gifs I would try to limit the actual dimensions of the gif to just the part that actually animates.

for example say you had a background color that was blue with a rotating model of a phone in the middle. I would crop the gif down to be just the phone and leave the background of that table cell blue that way you save on file size and can use a higher quality gif showing the phone rotating.

Images in emails do have a file size limit - as some email clients will disable images by default if the images are over a certain size, as well as they may mark the email as spam. I don't have the exact numbers handy but this is another reason to limit the file size of the images.

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Dev_TRooInbound
Solution
Participant

Responsive - Animated .gif size?

SOLVE

The ideal size of GIF should be upto 1mb. GIF is kind of Image format. There is a limit for Image file size in the email, but no specific limit for GIF. A good practice is to keep it upto 250 pixels. Many ESP's consider Gif under 250 pixels. As decreasing file size leads to increased loading speed. Email with a lot of content may take a lot of time in loading all its contents which may make you lose your leads due to their loss of interest.

 

GIF can be optimized using 4 simple tactics:


Cropping: Focus on the part that’s animated and crop the rest.
Remove framing: Keep it simple and focused, just like the totality of your email.
 Animate only part of the picture that you need: Use the layers in Photoshop that will allow you to isolate animated parts only.
Reduce colors: The reduction is color use can decrease the file size.

 


A responsive design is faster to load and pleasant to the eye of the viewer.

 

For the responsive design with images, a change in CSS should be done:

 

In CSS,  img { max-width: 100%; } used instead use width: 100% because every image will load in its original size, unless the viewing area becomes narrower than the image’s original width.

 

While the above is a great quick fix and a good start to responsive images and file size.

 

If your problem is resolved, marked it as Solved.

JPiche
Member

Responsive - Animated .gif size?

SOLVE

Thank you both!