- [Instructor] The very best email won't succeed
without a strong design.
And images are incredibly useful components
of visual design.
There are many reasons to use images
in your email campaigns.
The visual content can strengthen your message
and it can make complicated information into a quick read.
Research tells us that images
in your emails can boost engagement
and increase click through-rates as well.
Email services like MailChimp, Emma
and others have built-in tools
that let you quickly place images into your email.
Some of them will even let you edit the images
and adjust them into your email design,
right in the content editor.
Depending on the email clients that your audience uses,
background images can be a problem.
Not all email clients, display background images equally.
And if the entire message is held in the image
it could look like a big blank when opened.
Emails that contain only an image often land
in the spam folder too.
So, check the data to find out
what clients your email audience is using
before you use a background image.
Some marketers swear by an image to text ratio
and this can take some testing to figure
out what's the best ratio for your audience.
As a good starting point,
most marketers keep it around 20 to 30% images,
but the most important recommendation I have is
to experiment with different ratios for different messaging
and then check the data to see what leads
to the best results.
The next question that people often ask is
what's the best format for email images.
And let's take a look at the pros and cons of each.
PNG's or Portable Network Graphic files,
offer excellent fidelity
and a larger color palette than GIFs.
Unlike JPEGs, PNG compress without affecting the quality
of the image.
They can also act as transparent layers,
which makes them easy to blend in smoothly
over other content.
JPEGs are significantly smaller in file size.
So they're much quicker to download.
The most obvious difference
between a GIF and the other two formats is animation.
You can increase the interactiveness of your email
and show more things with an animated GIF.
Depending on your audience and their email clients,
including the type of phone,
here are the most important best practices
for using images in your emails.
You want to use the format that works
for the design and file size.
Use alt text for accessibility and low bandwidth situations.
Check the images on all types of displays.
Use the data that you have
about the devices that your audience uses
to know which ones to take a look at.
Reduce the file size where you can.
Hyperlink where appropriate,
especially of getting your reader
to your website is important.
Another quick word about alt text.
When you've designed an email
that coordinates images and texts beautifully,
and the email client you're sending your email to,
strips out half the content as you can see in this image,
some of your messages sadly lost.
You can regain some of the inspiration
by naming your images well and including cool alt text.
Using images in email can be a double edged sword.
Sure, the email may be beautiful
but is that really what you're going for?
Given all the work that you have to do with images?
Some brands are opting for text only emails
and I have to say these can be refreshing to read.