Email Marketing: How To Get Image-Heavy Emails Read
By Anna Johnson on April 6th, 2010If our email metrics – and those of other email marketers – are any indication, a lot of email subscribers read HTML emails without switching images on (i.e. downloading images to allow them to display).
Depending on how you design your HTML emails that may or may not be a problem. But if you use a lot of images in a poorly designed HTML email layout many or most of your subscribers may not end up reading some or all of your messages.
The solution, of course, lies in how you design your emails. Here at Kikabink News we have a strong bias towards text – probably because our email newsletter is all about conveying news articles – so we’ve designed our layout in such a way that you never need to download images to read the newsletter.
Sometimes, however, we – and certainly other email marketers – do need subscribers to view one or more images. So… how do you convince people to download such images?
The trick is to entice subscribers to do so by means of the ALT-text tags in the HTML code of your email. The ALT-text tags – literally, ‘alternative information’ – are those text messages that show up when images don’t display. You’ve probably seen ALT-text in emails (i.e. before allowing images to display) and when you hover your mouse over images on a webpage (provided someone has actually written it).
By writing something relevant or some kind of ‘teaser’ in the ALT-text you can entice people to download the accompanying image. Depending on your objective, target market, nature of the email, etc you might use the ALT-text to:
- state what the image is e.g. ‘Kikabink logo’
- tell the reader what you want them to do e.g. ‘Click Here’ or ‘Buy Now’
- explain what the offer is e.g. toy donkey
- state something intriguing e.g. ‘Download this image to see something scary’
Unlike on webpages where you might be inclined to incorporate keywords into your image ALT-text for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes, when it comes to emails the emphasis is on reader engagement.
You want the reader to see the image… you may even just want the reader to download the image in order to increase your open rate… but most of all you want the reader to engage with your email. The more they do that, the more likely they are to take other actions such as click through to your site and buy your product.
Of course, there are no hard and fast rules about what should go into email ALT-text. Ideally, you want to split-test different ALT-text approaches to see what yields the best results.
April 8th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Hi Anna,
This post got me thinking about the importance of email marketing in any online campaign. I know when I first started out in internet marketing I failed miserably until I started using email to follow up with my prospects. It really is amazing how much of a difference this can make to any online business.
Thanks,
Mark Lindsay