Email Marketing 101: Why You Should Never Use an Image as Email Content
Have you ever received an email where you had to wait for an image to load before you can read the message content? How about one where the image never loads at all? Annoying, right?
While images offer brands a way to send beautifully designed emails, they can create a real problem for marketers and audiences alike. Imagine sending an image-based email out to your customers. Maybe it loads for them, maybe it doesn’t. You could see they opened the email but how would you know if they could see your messaging?
Now imagine someone with a visual impairment who uses a screen reader to read the email content. What would they hear when your email is read to them? If you’ve forgone alt text, users will be left wondering what they’re missing.
To increase accessibility and help increase messaging comprehension, the industry shifted to live content blocks instead of a single image designed by a graphic artist.
Need to make the jump for your brand? Tony Wagner, our email automation specialist, has some recommendations on how you can adopt email best practices.
- Look at your email and think about how it would look if the images were removed. Does your message still make sense to the reader?
- Check the alt tags in your images. Do they accurately describe what is shown in that image?
- If you need to use complex design elements, break them up into individual image blocks and use live text. Even if those design elements fail to load on a reader’s device, they will still be able to read the live text.
- Before every email send, always check for accessibility to avoid alienating a portion of your customer base.
With the exponential growth of email marketing over the past few years, many companies have been working to catch up on their own email efforts. This can lead to growing pains, learning best practices the hard way.
If you’d some help in overcoming these pain points, our experienced email team would be delighted to work with you. Reach out today.
