New Feature: Full Width

The Dartagnan Email Builder has been enhanced with a new design feature: “Full Width”. A real game changer in terms of design, this new feature will enable our users to :

• Create more immersive emails and experiences
• Make a lasting impression on their audience and stand out from the competition
• Use Email Design to create an even richer User Experience
• Enhance their brand image

An exclusivity that no other email generator on the market today offers.

So, what is “Full Width”? How does it work? When can it be used? Is it compatible everywhere? Our experts present this new feature and answer all your questions about this little revolution.

As its name suggests, the “Full Width” feature allows you to build sections that will visually occupy the entire width of the visible space of the mailbox on the screen (the display itself depending on each mailbox).

As your emails are already displayed in full width on Mobile and Tablet devices, this new feature added to our Designer is dedicated to the Desktop display of your marketing emails.

A classic campaign is very often designed with a width of 640 pixels. In this case, it visually occupies the central part of the screen in a mailbox (this display varies according to mailboxes and mail clients).

With the “Full Width” feature, any section can occupy 100% of the width, i.e. the entire width of the visible space of the mailbox on the screen.

The first and most important question to answer is “Why? Why choose to deploy certain sections of your email in full width? What's in it for me? The “Full Width” feature opens up a number of possibilities.

Pixels are available on the screen, so why not use them? The space of an email is a restricted space; each pixel corresponds, in itself, to a space for exploration that there's no reason to deprive yourself of.

Enlarging the space allows you to :

• Give a wider view of your product range
• Enhance your product presentations
• inject more space into your compositions

When it comes to email, there are so few evolutions that the slightest change has an impact on design and branding.

A full-width section is both modern and immersive, immersing your audience directly in your brand universe. This immersive feeling is further enhanced by the mirror link/online version of your campaign.

Long considered the poor relation of design, email is a restrictive format, not only because of its size, but also because of the display constraints imposed by the various email clients.

These constraints force many campaign managers to restrict their creativity in order to secure the display. As a result, most inbox emails look the same. Some of them are even relatively insipid, even boring.

Full width offers an unusual visual effect on the desktop, which not only captures the attention of your readers, but also sets you apart from your competitors.

What's more, when full width isn't applied to the whole campaign, it creates a bit of a break and revitalizes the structure of your emails.

In the age of omnichannel, this last advantage is not the least interesting. Full Width gives your audience more the impression of browsing a Landing Page than an email. A further opportunity to align user experiences and gain consistency in branding and brand image.

When Dartagnan's teams joined forces with Devialet's, our Design studio set to work to roll out campaigns that would reflect Devialet's positioning: very high quality, hyper branded, original, modern and elegant, but above all very innovative. Among the proposals made was the “Full Width” section.

As the philosophy of the Dartagnan teams has always been to make the best design innovations available to as many people as possible, we decided to develop a native feature integrated into our builder that would enable every user to create this type of experience without the need for an additional service.

Does this feature correspond to a real user need? Here again, our product philosophy is decisive.

At Dartagnan, we don't prioritize features according to their recurrence and/or multiplicity of use. Our aim is to give our users the means to innovate and create new experiences - restricting applications as little as possible and leaving the user free to explore their uses.

Even if a feature won't necessarily have recurring or multiple applications, the possibility exists and can be seized. It's the user who becomes the creator of new experiences and new uses, according to his or her needs, positioning and creativity.

Thanks to the work of our R&D team, the functionality is indeed 100% responsive and compatible whatever the display environment, the mail client and/or the section to which it applies.

Whatever the width displayed on the screen, the size of the visual will adapt to continue to occupy the full width available in the mail client.

This behavior applies to all sections, including background sections, where the visual will completely adapt to the available space without any deformation.

Our recommendation is to use common sense and parsimony to exploit the full potential of this feature and preserve its differentiating effect.

This new feature is obviously intended more for visual than textual content (although you can also apply it to text sections).

It allows you to create a real design environment for your product visuals, setting the scene and letting them breathe within the campaign space.

An immersive hero immediately grabs your reader's attention and plunges them straight into your world. It's guaranteed to keep them within the email and prolong the user experience. Every second counts!

A 3-column layout is often a good way to show off the richness and breadth of your catalog. The problem is that the more columns, the less space. Thanks to Full Width, you'll be able to restore your visuals and content to their former glory, and above all, make your CTAs even more visible.

GIFS, videos and Sliders are often content that makes an impact on the reader and considerably increases click-through rates in the email. Combine the effect of these dynamic sections with that of Full Width to increase their reach and impact on your audience.

Of all the sections of a campaign, the Footer is generally the trickiest to handle. Often very corporate, legal or even administrative in nature, the Footer can sometimes prove boring. What's more, it's often packed with information and icons, making it difficult to understand and impractical to use.

By deploying your footers in Full Width, you can :

• Upgrade the design to reflect your image and create interesting experiences.
• Let your icons, redirect links and content breathe (often a plus for Fid programs).

While the functionality is 100% responsive, it's important to master its use in order to get the most out of it.

Expand the space dedicated to visuals, but keep your content, information and CTAs within the 640-pixel limit for secure display (including in your mobile and tablet versions).

Larger visuals mean heavier campaign weights. Should we therefore deprive ourselves of Full Width? No: compress your visuals to reduce their weight, use Full Width on a limited number of sections, and pay attention to the composition and other visual and/or animated content of your campaign.

Depending on the display configuration, our Builder will directly adapt the visual to preserve its consistency and display. In other words, it enlarges the visual space to be displayed in the campaign. For Full Width to be effective, our Builder needs to have plenty of material to display. You'll need to plan for wider, taller visuals to conserve material in the various configurations.

Like all high value-added resources, the rarer it is, the greater its impact.

Unless you're designing an email with a single section (this can be the case for event-driven emails, for example), we advise against using Full Width too often, especially when alternating with classic sections, for several reasons:

• You don't want to lose the coherence of your structure.
• You'll dilute the effect
• You risk weighing down your campaign with too many visuals.