Email Images: How to Select and How to Avoid

In the previous article, we talked about how email images are beneficial for boosting your CTR.  In this article, we will move a step ahead, and we will talk about how to select the right images for your emails and why we need to control them.

Finding the right image for your email is a crucial step. In an email, images are the ones delivering messages to your customer. We can also say that Images are the ones enhancing message delivery by attracting customers.

So the right images are crucial to get your message across. To make more out of the lesser text, let’s learn about what kind of images we can use in an email.
 

Chart and Graphs:

 

What can better than these when you want to show some numbers, facts, or some comparisons with competitors? When you are providing statistics or some data, graphs and charts become the best medium to back it up. Graphs make it easy to prove your points and make data easier to understand for the recipient.

If you are at excel, you must add graphs to your emails. You can also use online tools to create graphs in a few clicks.

 

Stock Images:

 

One of the easiest ways to add images to your emails is this one. There is a large set of images that you can choose from various websites like Shutterstock (paid), Pixabay (free and paid), Unsplash (free), Depositphotos (paid), and more.

When you are using stock images, try to find images that suit your demographic more closely. We are not here to just add images to add images. Try to do it responsibly.

 

Screenshots:

 

If you are using your email to explain a process to your recipient, then instead of using bullet points, use an array of screenshots. This will help them visualize the process and understand it better than those bullet points.

If you are explaining a web-based tool, you can use browser extensions like the Awesome Screenshot tool to capture screenshots. It will help you take screenshots of the whole page or visible area. You can also highlight or draw on captured screenshot before saving it.

If you do not want to use it, use windows Snip and Sketch or Snipping Tool to take screenshots and to draw on them. It is an in-built tool with one limitation. It does not allow scrolling while taking a screenshot.

 

Illustrations:

 

To display what your brand or product can do, you can achieve it easily using illustrations. Illustration opens many ways for you to demonstrate the value of your brand or product while staying true to it.

Here you can check out our Instagram to know how we are using different illustration techniques to display our value.

 

User-Generated Content:

 

What is user-generated content? A content- text, image, video, anything- generated by users with your brand name or your product is called UGC. People trust these kinds of content over brand promotion. If we look at the number, 76% of customers trust content generated by other people over the brand campaigns.

So if you start using user-generated content in your emails, it will create the trust that you need to convince your customers. Just imagine the impact of a review, video, or image generated by a genuine user of your brand or product.

Tell your users to write reviews, click images or shoot videos for you and reward them for it. Now the content you got from them can be used in your email campaign as user-generated content.

 

Why should you avoid ‘Image-Only Emails’?

 

Excess of everything is harmful. This same applies to email images. You can not just create an email totally out of image(s). Why? Let me tell you.

By Default Images are Blocked: You may have experienced this. When you read an email, images in it are hidden by default. It doesn’t matter if you are using a fast internet or slow one. 43% of email users have images turned off. This means if you make an image-only email, the impact will be half of a normal email.

File Size Matter: If you are on fast internet, that doesn’t mean everyone is. Before putting your images into an email, make sure they are not heavy in size. Try to keep the whole email below 3-4 MB. If it exceeds that, and if it takes more than 30 seconds to open, they might unsubscribe you. No one wants an email that they cannot read.

Text to Voice for Email: As technology is advancing, people who are on the move most of the time, use voice assistants to read emails. These voice assistants do not understand HTML or Alt tags for now. So if you are using images or HTML too much, your strategy may strick back.

 

So What Are the Solution?

 

The solution here lies in our previous article about email images. If you remember, we talked about PNG images in that article. This format supports transparency. So you can easily blend them with live text (a text wrote using code). This way, even if images get blocked, the recipient will always have something to read.

Another solution to those problems is to make CTA using code. CTA here refers to click-to-action, a button used to redirect the recipient when clicked. If you create the button via image, so by default, it will be blocked the same as other images. So instead of using images, try to go with code.

 

Departing Words:

 

So now we can say that our session on email images is over here. Now, you know how effectively and efficiently you target your customers. So start working on your email images now and just drag and drop them in your emails. In case you need our assistant, feel free to communicate through our social handles.