Image only emails – Smart or Stupid?
Most email clients block email images from unknown senders by default. So best practice advice for the use of images on email (particularly large ones that appear in the preview pane) is to avoid using them if at all possible.
If you do have to use images the general recommendation is that you use them sparingly, making sure you use carefully thought Alt Tags AND text descriptors for the images. Other design techniques used to compensate for the image being blocked include, putting text behind them and using collapsible boxes.
So why so many companies persist in sending image only emails with no ALT Tags?
The short answer is that for some brands and markets – Fashion for example, images are integral to the sell, so they have to be used. However it is much less easy to understand why such great brands, with significant email budgets and very smart people working on their campaigns completely ignore best practice advice when it comes to ALT Tags etc. Surely their results must be adversely affected!
It would appear not. Analysis conducted by my company into the impact of images on client campaigns reveals a very interesting phenomenon.
Emails such as Email-Worx our own newsletter that is optimised for image blocking generate clicks from people who did not “open” the email. We typically find that around 3% of the clicks do not have a corresponding open (false negatives).
By comparison emails that use lots of or consist entirely of images generate fewer clicks without opens. In fact the harder it is to decipher the content of an email with images blocked the lower the incidence of false negatives!
It would appear that by withholding any information about what is in the email until images are downloaded, brands are able to get more of their subscribers to download their images. A very important tactic for brands that rely on creative to sell! Clearly this is only likely to work if the email is about a product their subscribers desire or are highly engaged with the senders brand.
So does this mean that you can ignore best practice and start to use images with impunity?
There's no right or wrong answer to that question, in our experience an approach that is highly effective in one market may not work for another. However we believe that marketers have 3 options and in the most recent issue of the Alchemy Worx newsletter we provide examples of how brands use images and discuss how images can be used in greater detail.
Here is a quick summary of the article.
Fully optimised for image blocking
Email designed in such a way that the content of the email is easily decipherable and downloading the images makes very little difference.
More suited to:
• Products and services that are not reliant on visuals
• Emails where content is the value proposition
• Transactional or update emails
• Newsletters
• B2B
Optimising for creative driven or image only emails
Emails designed to have little or no value until images are downloaded.
More suited to:
• Products and services that are highly visual
• Brand building
• B2C
• Building Desire
• Price indifference
Optimising for both
Emails designed “sell” with images blocked, but look more appealing with images downloaded.
More suited to:
• Products and services that are quite visual
• Retailers with many product lines to promote
• Groceries
• Price sensitive products and discounting
There you have it! If you are more likely to sell to a person who has seen your product or creative than a person who hasn't you may be able to maximise the number of people who download your creative and generate more sales by completely ignoring best practice.
Last 5 posts by Dela Quist
- Deliverability by engagement – a class action lawsuit waiting to happen? - September 3rd, 2010
- Help us find the secret of writing effective/engaging/compelling/successful subject lines - June 8th, 2010
- The Secret Power of the Unopened Email - November 4th, 2009
- Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics relating to Email - March 25th, 2009
I was under the impression that image only emails also got poor deliverability.
Spam Assassin will always give high spam scores if there is more than about 40% of the content covered by images.
I don't see that mentioned here?
Hi Andy
Am I right in assuming that you think great brands should not use image only emails?
Anyway to respond to your comment, I chose not to cover deliverability, partly because the article is about design and partly because it is a highly complex issue – for example a high Spam Assasin score does not necessarily mean you will have problems getting into the inbox.
I also think the question I ask "does this mean that you can ignore best practice and start to use images with impunity?" does cover it.
If anything your comment about the potential impact of image use on deliverability reinforces the point I am making.
There are some great brands regularly sending image only emails that contravene best practice in design AND deliverability. If they were getting bad results they would have stopped by now or fired their agency
So the question remains; are they ALL stupid or could they be on to something?
interesting findings
my team is striving to balance image v.s. text cause we are concerned about spamming…