A system and method for packaging electronic messages for delivery to a communication device is provided. Where the electronic message comprises at least one quoted parent message, the quoted parent message is identified by means of delimiters within the body of the electronic message, and the quoted message thus identified is replaced with an identifying instruction referring to an identifier corresponding to a previously received message comprising the quoted parent message. The edited electronic message is then transmitted to a recipient device, which uses the identifying instruction to reconstruct the original message by querying a data store using the identifier to locate a copy of the quoted parent message. If no quoted parent message is found, a request is issued by the recipient device to transmit a full version of the original electronic message.