Blog
Images in email
Date:11 Jun 10
How you treat images in emails can really make or break a campaign.
We regularly still encounter errors with images in emails and thought we will supply tips on the use of images within email communications this week:
- Keep image files sizes small: Readers don' want to wait too long for images to load. Try and keep images below 25kb.
- Image blocking issues: If the image you use is very high and it eds up being blocked; the textual copy may be pushed a long way down the page and not seen. This is particularly relevant to people using a desktop email client and preview windows. If you do need to use images that are quite high, another workaround is to not include the image size in the coding - that way, the blocked image placeholder area will be quite small.
- Animated gifs and email: Many email clients will display animated gifs, with one (big) exception - Outlook 2007. This version of Outlook no longer uses IE's rendering engine - it uses Word; so only the first frame will display.
- Include plain text: An email that consists solely of images or a single image will attract a higher spam score. Try and have a balance between image and text.
- Use alt text: If your image is blocked, all is not lost - use the ALT image tag - the alt tag or text attribute briefly describes what the image represents.
Example
<a href="http://www.example.com"><img border="0" src="http://www.example.com/email-marketing.gif" alt="Email-marketing image tips">
- Use Absolute URLs to Link to Your Images: One common misconception when composing HTML email is to think that your message will always have a copy of the embedded image file, no matter where it is viewed. The fact of the matter is that HTML code can only ‘point to’ the image file, but cannot retain a copy of it. That is why it is important to make sure that all images you wish to use in your HTML email are ‘hosted’ on a web server. This way, your email recipients are able to point to the hosted images and pull them into the proper locations in your email layout when viewing your message.
- Avoid Using Background Images: Background images are stripped by many email clients when defined in the attributes of HTML elements like <body> and <table>. Try to develop the design for your HTML email to use background colors instead.
- Test, test and test again: Testing is becoming an increasingly important part of email marketing - different browsers, email clients and services will render your emails differently. Try making use of the email compatibility tool in pMailer to determine how different email clients will render your email.
