The Expert’s Guide To Using Images For Email
Imagine you’re seated at the cinema, waiting for the sequel of one of your favorite movies.?
The opening soundtrack starts playing, and you begin to hear the dialogue, but the screen remains blank with only the subtitles showing.?
While you might be able to read the subtitle and understand what’s happening, you’ll get a lot more out of the movie with the video playing.?
Images are just as important to email.?
Although you can send a text-only email, it’s worth remembering that it’s?easier for humans to recall images or pictures than words. A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words.
Unfortunately, many business owners only think about adding images to their ads, social media updates, and blog posts, leaving images out of their emails.
Considering how?profitable email marketing?can be, it’s essential to know how to use images in an email like an expert.?
Wondering where to start? This article will show you how.?
Let’s begin.?
Use Images to Appeal to Your Subscribers’ Emotions
As humans, we often?associate certain moods and feelings with colors?and images. For example, most people think of nature when they see the color green. Similarly, people often associate a sense of calm or peace with images of beaches.
Using the right images can help you appeal to your subscribers’ emotions and motivate them to engage with your email.?
Types of Images to Use in Your Email
Stock photos
You can find millions of free stock images to use for your email campaigns on websites like?Unsplash?and?Pexels. However, because stock images are free, they are often generic and fail to stand out.?
In-house photos
An excellent alternative to stock photos is to take your own pictures. In-house images work best when you want to include product shoots or brand-related images in your emails. Unlike stock photos, in-house images are authentic and engaging.
User-generated photos
If you don’t have the resources to take photos in-house but don’t want to use stock images, you can use user-generated photos.?
These are images curated from your customers’ social media feeds that show them using your product. You can even run a contest or share a branded hashtag that makes it easier to collect these images — with your customers’ permission, of course.
Use the Right Image Format
All image formats aren’t equal. It’s important to understand the different types and their limitations to choose the correct format for your email.
Email Image Formats
GIFs work well for small, simple images such as symbols and logos. They can also be animated, which makes them a good choice if you want more engagement. You can even create your own GIFs to establish your brand image in your recipients’ minds.
Unlike PNGs and JPEGs (both of which use a 24-bit palette), GIFs use an 8-bit palette—meaning they can only display a maximum of 256 colors.
Here’s an example of an animated GIF:
JPEGs are excellent for more complicated images such as photographs. They’re larger than standard GIFs but provide more detail. Exporting them at between 60-70% will help your email load faster without significantly impacting image quality.?
PNGs suit small-sized images with transparent components, allowing them to blend into the background of other content types effectively. When compressed, PNGs maintain an original image’s quality better than JPEGs. That’s why they’re an excellent option for small-sized images.
The most significant limitation of PNGs is that they usually have a larger file size compared to JPEGs or GIFs.
Here is an excellent example of an email from Magic Spoon that uses PNG images:
Keep the Most Important Info in the Text
While many of your email subscribers might turn on images in their emails, there’s still a significant percentage of them who won’t. Therefore, if you want your message to be clearly conveyed, you must consider recipients who block images in emails.?
To do that, leave the essential information in your email in a standard text format instead of in an image format.?
You might use dynamic images to reinforce information like a product’s name or price, but you must display these vital details in HTML text so all browsers can see them. Using image alt tags, as discussed above, can also ensure your email doesn’t leave subscribers scratching their heads.
That goes for your call to action buttons, too. If you’re using images for these converting tools, almost half of all browsers might not be able to find them. So instead, use HTML links and button links to ensure they’re visible to all potential customers.
Get the Size Right
Choosing the right size for your images is a balancing act.?
Make your images too large, and they’ll look impressive, but they’ll also take far too long to load, especially for mobile users. Emails with large images also risk being flagged as spam. Make your email images too small, and they’ll load faster but will look so poor that you’ll wish you didn’t use any at all.
Then there are the requirements of your email service provider (ESP) to consider. For example, some ESPs will automatically compress large email images, so it’s worth knowing your provider’s limits.
As a rule, try to keep your images less than 300 KB in size. An optimized size of 72 dots per inch (DPI) works well for most graphics. If you want to showcase large, high-resolution photos, consider using a thumbnail in the email that links to the high-quality website version.
Besides the image sizes, you also need to get your ratios right.?
We suggest designing emails that use seven parts text to three parts images. This balance keeps emails as attractive and valuable as possible while helping them avoid the spam folder.
Use Images to Show Your Product in Action
Imagine trying to sell a vacation destination or the last pieces from a spring collection without pictures.?
Using only copy to explain your product would only get you so far, especially when an image would help create a better picture of your product in your customer’s head.
In the email below, Danner, an outdoor clothing brand, uses powerful imagery to showcase their latest boots.
Use Image Alt Text
Alt text (or alternative text) is a short message that describes an image to your readers. While alt text is common on websites, you can also use it in your emails to let your reader know what an image shows.?
Using alt text is vital because many of your email subscribers likely turn off images in their email, which means they can miss out on vital information.?
Good alt text is also essential for accessibility. In the United States alone,?over 59.6% of people with disabilities access the internet. Alt texts make it easier for screen readers to “read” images and make these images accessible to people with visual impairments or learning disabilities.
Since so many users may see your alt text rather than the image, it’s essential that you put thought into conveying the message of the image through that text.
For example, let’s assume you’re having a winter sale for your online women’s apparel business. You might launch an email campaign that uses text overlay on an image to tell loyal shoppers that new seasonal coats are discounted by 15%.
Using alt text like “brown coat image” would be rather uninspiring. However, alt text like “15% off new brown winter coats” describes the image enough to cause the reader to view it and shop for winter coats they might like.?
This email below from TK Maxx (European subsidiary of TJ Maxx) shows what an email looks like without alt text.
The email is clearly not accessible to subscribers with disabilities or those who have turned off their images.
Optimize Images for Different Devices
Most people today use more than one device to view emails. For example, a recent study shows that?36.6% of email opens?were from mobile devices, while 40% were from desktops. As such, it’s vital to check how your images appear on different devices.
Images that look great on mobile screens might appear small on desktops. Likewise, images that seem alright on desktops might take up the whole screen on a mobile device.?
Wrapping Up
As with all aspects of your marketing campaign, it’s essential to measure how your subscribers respond to your use of images in emails.?
ESPs like iContact offer?performance reporting functions?that help you stay on top of your campaign to know what’s working and what isn’t. You can track the number of emails you sent, the open rate, click-through rate and also run A/B tests. Ready to start using images in your emails like a pro? iContact helps small businesses grow with email marketing.?Get started for free.
**This post was originally published at: https://blog.icontact.com/images-for-emails/