Creating Your Email For "Images Off"

It's tough to think about all of the things you need to do when you create your email. You want your offer to be seen but you also want your email to look great. And with those nasty email readers turning off graphics and messing around with the content of your email, you need to take care when creating them.

I was creating some emails the past few weeks here at VerticalResponse for some new pre-designed layouts (stay tuned for industry layouts BTW). I noticed there are a few things you can think about when you design your email that would be optimal for reading in many email readers when your images turned off.

Here are some tips:

• Use tables and color 
  I know using tables for your website is so 90s, but using them for email is a must if you want to preserve the layout in any of the umpteen email readers your recipients are using.  If you look at many of our pre-designed layouts in the VR Email Canvas, we use tables and have columns in colors, and with the images turned off, the formatting stays and look great.
• Name Your Images Appropriately
  Make sure your images are named correctly. If you've got your logo, name it something like "your_company_logo.gif" and remember to give it an alt tag (e.g alt="Your Company") so in the event the email reader strips out the images, your recipient may still recognize your name and know it's legit. If you've got product images, name them "my_product.jpg".
• Your Company Name and Contact Information...In Text
  Make sure when you're typing your copy, you include your company name or the name of who the email is coming from. If you've only got it in the image and you don't follow steps from above, recipients might think it's spam and unsubscribe.

Some Examples:

In this example, each area of the email is created in its own table so that if the images are turned off, it won't effect the entire layout. Even though it may not be obvious at first glance in the email below, the "In this Issue" in the far right column is in a table as well. I used color to make it blend in with the rest of the design. I also included the company name in the headline text, making it instantly recognizable even with images turned off (see below).

Email in an HTML Editor

Images Displayed

Images Off

In this next email example, you see one table with three rows. The first row contained 2 images on a black background. How? Just look at the "Images Off" example below it. The 2nd row only contained the important text about the event with one image, aligned right. The third row has the important contact information displayed prominently in text.

Email in an HTML Editor

Images Displayed

Images Off

In this final email example you can see that the company name has been repeated in the first line, just to make sure the recipient knows who this email is coming from. The far right column has interesting use of background highlight colors to delineate the different sections, but it's all part of the same table.

Email in an HTML Editor

Images Displayed

Images Off

So there you have it. Even though your email won't always display the graphics, there are still ways you can preserve the layout of it. If you've got some ideas of your own, feel free to comment and share.

Comments

[Siber]

I like it and the background and colors make it easy to read

[Pat]

"Not good prospects for sales" ... how about just aware of how spammers operate with tracking gifs. ... or how about running over a slow connect? I suppose that means anyone using dial-up is a poor sales prospect. Might want to rethink that attitude.

[Janine]

I agree with you Virginia. Companies who serve businesses, especially larger enterprise businesses, have luck getting through the corporate systems administrators who will allow text in as a company policy but not lots of emails with images.

Also, many people who use email readers with images turned off or not displayed don't know to turn them on. They may actually be exactly the type of customer anyone needs.

[Virginia]

In response to the second comment: People who don't display graphics are not good prospects? I think not.

[Doug Kelly]

Email without the graphics is like radio instead of TV. What's the point? We might as well write our emails like the email sales fiends that pack my inbox. But those are boring.
The downside is making an email look too slick with too much graphics. Those are like the stranger who pulls up in front of your house in a Cadillac. You know he's either rich or he's fixin' to get that way.

Most graphic emails look a little too corporate. Cold and slick.

I think those who turn off their graphics are probably not good prospects for sales, anyway. Obviously, anyone who can look all day at a computer screen without graphics is a dismal soul. Not likely to leap onto the latest sales letter.

[Kevan]

You should also always include height and width in your img tags. When images are turned off in Outlook it stretches each image the width of the sentence "Right-click here to download..."

By setting height and width for all images, your layout won't get broken apart when images are off in Outlook.