Stop Looking to the Big Boys for Creative Ideas

I was looking at the email marketing campaigns in my inbox thinking to myself, "I hope that our users don't look to the big boys of retail to copy their email campaigns because, well, they're just wrong."

Will someone tell these guys to stop using image-only emails for their campaigns? Sure they probably pay fancy agencies to do wonderful-looking work (they are pretty) but these guys for sure aren't up to snuff when it comes to creating email marketing campaigns for deliverability.

Return Path shows that "image spam" is going to make even more recipients shut down images by default, particularly on unknown senders.

I'm announcing the winners for prettiest email campaigns that many recipients will never see.

And the winners are.....

Neiman Marcus
Neiman as it appears in my junk folder	Neiman with images turned "on"
Frontgate
Frontgate as it appears in my junk folder	Frontgate with images turned "on"
Brookstone
Brookstone as it appears in my junk folder	Brookstone with images turned "on"

These emails appeared in my junk folder because many ISPs will actually filter you there for image-only emails. The "big boys" of retailing don't necessarily have it down when it comes to email marketing best practices so you may not want to look to their campaigns as a source of creative ideas. Check out more on deliverability.

Comments

[Alf Brand]

Paul - It is always good practice to include an alt tag on your images, and necessary to comply with accessibility standards, should you be concerned about people with disabilities reading your emails.

Unfortunately, alt tags are not supported by all of the email browsers. :(

Here is a list of the results you would find in some of the more popular email clients.

Display alt text:

- Outlook 2003
- Outlook Express
- Yahoo Mail Beta
- Thunderbird
- Gmail (Contingent upon text length)
- .Mac (Contingent upon text length)

Do NOT display alt text (so much for their accessibility efforts):

- Apple Mail (Replaced by question-mark icon) This is what you see in the examples above
- Outlook 2007 (Replaced by security message)
- Windows Live Mail
- Hotmail
- Yahoo Mail
- Eudora

So, keep your alt text short & sweet, 1 or 2 words at most. If it's longer than your image is wide, you loose support in both Gmail & .Mac.

Oh, btw, VR's canvas tool will add alt tags to your images automatically.

[Paul]

I had always thought that by using ALT tags in the images correctly, then the ALT text would appear if the images are turned off. In the examples you use above, do none of the images use proper ALT tags or does your email client simply not show them? ALT text used *properly* for images can help the customer decide if the content of the email is relevant to them or not.

[Alf Brand]

Home Depot gets it wrong then right! In the same Day!

This is so funny. I received two newsletters from Home Depot on the same day.

The first one came in (3/29/07 11:37:05AM PDT, to be exact) letting me know my local circular is now available online. It’s the classic bad example, all images & the calls to action are “View it as a Web page” (ok, this is good), “Store Finder” and “UNSUBSCRIBE” hmmm tempting...

Then... at 12:00:42 PM PDT another came in, probably sent by corporate. Essentially the same content, (a sale I would have learned about should I have read the online circular) but it was built with best practices in mind. Gives me all the info I need, sans images, to get exited about possibly getting a deal this weekend on that Chop Saw I’ve had my eye on. Well Done!

View the bad & the good

Anyway, it looks like Home Depot is on the right track, hopefully it’ll soon trickle down to the local arms of the company.

[Bob McClain]

Perhaps there's a better way to get people to see your image-laden sales page. I send out my newsletter as a single paragraph and no images with a link to More...

I simply write such an enticing and entertaining opening paragraph that most readers can't resist. And of course, the final sentence is a cliffhanger...

The link goes directly to the full article on my website. From there, they often start hanging out on my site reading other articles. And then they're hooked.

Entertaining and intriguing writing takes some serious investment but if you want people to view your image-laden page, make it easy by enticing them with words in the email and then let them click through to the page with the images on your site.

If you want some great ideas for "hooks" to get people to click through, don't pay attention to the retailers, take a look at the Time magazine covers for the last year. If the hooks they write can get people to pick up the magazine on impulse and buy it, imagine what using similar-styled hooks can do for your email campaign.

You can visit Time's website and find a good selection of the early 2006 magazine covers.
www.time.com/time/coversearch/

[Janine]

Sorry Jack, I see your questions.

1. Why are images blocked as spam? Many spammers send image-only emails so ISPs may block your emails if they're filtering this technique. At the email reader level many email readers have images turned off as the default.

2. Your best guess on how many email programs
block these type ads 30% 40% 50% 60% ?? According to Return Path, as much as 20% of your email could be showing with images turned off.

4.How do your emails get through with images? We recommend to use text as well as images and not overload your email with images. If you're asking how does VerticalResponse enable images to show up, the only magic bullet is for you to have a great relationship with your recipients and urge them to accept you into their address book. This way you'll get into the inbox and your images will show up.

[Jack Wallace]

Att: Janine. Was looking for answers to my
post of March 28th @ 12.59.am Thanks! Jack

[Janine]

For Jack - I'm not really sure where you are looking but I often answer blog comments. I'd love others to chime in and answer too, to make it truly interactive. Are you not looking in the right places?

[Jack Wallace]

Hello, Do you answer any of these posts??
Or is this just a place to see our name in print?

This is a chance for your firm to pick up
business if you are really providing an
interactive blog! People asking questions
have problems they are trying to solve. Solve them and your own your way to increase
ing your customer base.

[Janine]

Everyone check out Alf's comment! A great example of an email done well!

[Alf Brand]

Normally newsletters I get from HGTV are no better than those highlighted above.

But, recently someone over there got the right Idea... Figures, the newsletter is from "HGTV ideas". Must be the new kid ;)

I could read the entire newsletter with images turned off and it still looked damn good. Well-formatted, good typography, it made me want to turn on the images. Excellent job!

Check it out (images off & on)

Now, if they would only apply this best practice to all of their newsletters, everyone’s Home & Garden would be a better place.

[kristopher]

Hmmmm… most of this seems to largely depend upon your audience. These days most people sign-up to receive monthly newsletters from retailers or whom ever expecting to see promotions and specials.

Having tried it both ways the campaigns with sexy or fun imagery seemed to always have a better click through rate. Finding the happy medium is the tricky part!

[Heather]

Actually, those emails don't have much impact. Even if they do get through spam filters as most email programs now have images turned off by default.

The user opens up what appears to be a blank email with little, tiny text that reads "click here to turn on images". The vast majority do not. They just hit delete.

When trying to get a message out, you should never ever make your cutomers do more work than they should. As catalogers, every one of those companies should know that already.

The really sad thing is that you can accomplish the same slick look and still have a text heavy email. It just takes some knowhow is all. The message gets out and the email still looks cool.

[michael jones]

It is easy to see why alot of people default to image only emails - for some they are so much easier to work create - you don't need to worry anout using html or css, what formatting will you use etc etc. But the end game is getting things in the inbox for a start. That is before people even open it.

So images may seem easier and nicer but if it don't get through it's all a waste of time.

Large companies may not care about loosing a few on the way but they should.

[Jack]

Nice article, Questions
1. Why are images blocked as spam?
2. Your best guess on how many email programs
block these type ads 30% 40% 50% 60% ??
4.How do your emails get through with images?
INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW !

Thanks! Jack

[Therese]

Could you please show some examples of good email marketing? Where can we find support for people to help us create and distribute these kind of emails? Thanks.

[Janine]

For Brian - Thanks for the comment. Great point too. My point was not to compare an HTML email vs. a text email, it was to say mixing it up is a better idea. I'll create a post for what would be better emails to send. I do think that you should test your emails to an email reader that has images turned off so you'll see how it looks. That's an easy thing to do.

[O'Neil Lewis]

I am a beginner and when I get great info like this I have to pay keen attention. Thanks much for those great pointers.

[Brian]

Thank you for an Interesting e-mail.

However I think you to have concede that if they get through to the spam filters they have impact. As a online shopper I would take a look at these sites before a purely text based e-mail directing me to visit there website.

Your article would have really been great if you had shown some examples of what you classify as excellent either text only based e-mails or a combo of text and image.

I appreciate delivery is critical but so are sales and web traffic.

Regards
Brian

[Chip Doyle]

Great title and email. Face it, when was the last time you saw the "Big Boys" tell their target market to STOP doing anything. It's catchy and compelling!

Big firms spend millions (billions?) on brand development to create a subliminal association with their name and product. Smaller firms usually can't afford to (or shouldn't) spend big bucks on "branding." They usually need to identify prospects that want to buy something soon and recognize that branding AND a solid call to action can be done simultaneously.

The reality is that no one at the Big Boys will lose their job or sleep over the ROI of an email sent to 800,000 or so prospects.

Thanks for pointing out one of the many pitfalls of Big Boy marketing to small/medium sized business. It's a different ballgame altogether and hopefully you've saved some people from a frustrating and expensive lesson.

Good work :-)