It has been said that the attention span of an average human is about 8-seconds. So when it comes to sending emails to your subscribers, it’s apparent that you don’t have much time to impress them; they are either going to take action with your email or send it to the trash folder in the blink of an eye.
While many factors come into play with subscriber engagement, if the images in your email aren’t optimized for speed or to grab the reader’s attention, there is a good chance you will lose your audience.
Here are some effective ways to optimize and use images more effectively in your next email marketing campaign.
Testing. Testing. 1,2,3
Sending yourself a test draft of your email campaign is always a must. But if you aren’t utilizing an inbox preview assistant to test how your email looks across all browsers and on mobile devices, you may not know if the images in your email are rendering as intended. Also, it is beneficial to test against different ISP’s and service providers because many treat email images differently.
If your current email platform doesn’t offer an inbox preview assistant, investing in one such as Email on Acid or Litmus will help you make sure your emails appear consistently in all email clients and browsers.
Know your audience
When sending email campaigns to segmented audiences, your content should not be the only thing that changes. The images in your campaign should be tested and designed to reflect your audience when you are dealing with different demographics. The best marketers are the ones who include images that are relevant to their segmented audiences. And always remember – don’t forget to A/B test for best results.
Add image captions
Since many ISP’s automatically block the automatic download of email images, always make sure to add a caption, or use alternative text that briefly describes the image.. Including alternative text in your emails will give your subscriber a sense of what they are seeing – or not seeing.
Avoid using words as an image
It is recommended that words should always be in HTML or plain text. If you use images in lieu of text, you run the risk of restricting the visibility of your messaging.
Image downloading time may be costing you
If the images in your email take too long to download, you can all but forget about your recipient engaging with your email any further.
An image’s load time is contingent on whether the device is set to use Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G. The best way to speed up the time it takes for a recipient to load an image, is to use smaller images in responsive designed emails. By doing so, you can cut their load time by as much as six seconds and all but guarantee a higher conversion rate for your email.
Bottom line? Always take the extra step to optimize images in your emails because your email campaigns play a big role in the reflection of your brand’s marketing.
