5 Things to Know About Using Images In Your Email

We've recently been asked a bunch of questions about using images in email so I thought this would be a good time to talk about 5 quickies to help you out.

Beware of a “good” image to text ratio - We recommend a 30/70 image to text ratio as a healthy mix for maximum deliverability. Why? If your email is image heavy you run the risk of winding up in the junk folder. I've recently been looking at a few junk folders and I'm finding that one key across multiple junk folders is image heavy emails.

Use “Alt Tags” - What is an alt tag? It's the alternative text you give your image that pops up when your image is either moused over or not displayed. Alt tags can also contain key words for some search engine results. For example, our alt tag for our VerticalResponse logo might be "VerticalResponse - Email Marketing for Small Business" so that our recipients know when they open the email and see that alt tag they know that it's us.

When you use our Media Library you can give all of your images Alt Tags.

Don’t use one large image as the sole content of your email -  If your email is made up of either only one large image or multiple images and your recipient's reader has images turned off, the first thing they'll see is your unsubscribe link.

Don’t use heavy images - Try to keep your images under 25k because if they take too long to load, your impatient recipients will likely move on to their next email. If your images are too large, use a tool like spinwave to make them “lighter” without sacrificing too much quality.

Don't forget to link your images – Make sure if you include an image you link off from it. Everyone expects to be able to get somewhere by clicking on an image.

I hope this helps, if anyone has any other ideas please share!

Comments

[Kevan]

You forgot image sizes. Leaving out image sizes, especially width, is probably the worst mistake for Outlook users as all of your content can be pushed off the page by Outlook's image place holder.

Here is a screen showing the consequences of leaving out image widths.
http://www.vaultware.com/temp/bad-email.png

[Joshua Feinberg]

Hi Twiggy.

Absolutely! Just follow these quick steps:

1. Add your image into your message within the Email Canvas
2. Click on the image (you'll see a black border appear)
3. Then click the hyperlink icon in the toolbar (it's the chain link)
4. Add your link and click Update.
5. You'll now have an image that has a link behind it.

P.S. See my comment to Nina's post below in case you want to remove the default blue border

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Josh Feinberg
VP, Product Management
VerticalResponse, Inc

[Joshua Feinberg]

Hi Nina,

When using the Email Canvas and adding hyperlinks to either text or images the default behavior is to make them underlined (to show that it's a link). In the case of the image, the underline actually takes the form of a blue border. There is an easy way to fix this in your email while preserving the "clickability" of your link.

1. Add your image
2. Click on your image and add your hyperlink
3. Right-click on your image and choose the "Image Properties" option.
4. Enter "0" for the Border and then click Update.
5. Blue border is gone, image is clickable.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Josh Feinberg
VP, Product Management
VerticalResponse, Inc

[Twiggy]

Is there a way to link a picture and text together? Putting in links and images are quite time consuming, so I have to choose one or the other, and I choose text because then the links are labeled in the summary report. My email is about new products, and the pictures are extremely valuable to my clients.

[Matt]

How about being able to "link your images" from within the Media Library. Otherwise it's a separate step you have to remember to do later.

[Janine]

Hi Jorge and Tom - When you click on an image to add it to your Email Canvas campaign there is a field for "Alternative Text" pre-filled with your image name. You can keep the name of your image or change it there.

[Jorge]

Where in the Media Library can I add the Alt Tags? I could not find it...
I am using the 4 images template, how do I add links to each image?

[Tom Marantette]

Where would I find the "Alt Tags" command when creating a campaign?

[Janine]

Hi Jaime

You are absolutely right. When an image is clickable, the "alt" text isn't always the mouseover, it depends on your email client.

Janine

[Jamie]

Above your recommend using alt tags for all your images. However, I noticed in your latest newsletter, there were no meaningful alt tags. Just alot of useless information when you hovered over the image.

[Nina]

Regarding linking images-- when I do that the image displays an unsightly blue border. Any way to avoid that?