Consumer emailing list Australia

How you treat email marketing images can really make or break a campaign.

 Back in the days of plain text emails, copy was king. Nowadays, we’re able to to relay much of what we once had to explain through the written word with the use of images. Lets check out what you are doing with your images to ensure you are making the best use of email marketing images.

Keep images under 25kb
Nobody wants to wait 30 seconds to see the image load. Even if you’re embedding the image in the email itself rather than referencing it on your servers; people won’t take too kindly to a 500kb image slowing things down when receiving email. 

Try and use images under 25kb here possible

Use as few images as possible
Every image adds weight to the email or is an added call back to the server and given the short attention span of users, every second counts. Try to use one image only where possible (obviously in a newsletter you may want to add more than one)

Optimize all images
Try and optimise / compress the image where possible. Most graphics software offers compression features whereby you can reduce the image kilobyte size without any apparent loss of quality. In many cases a 25kb image can be optimized to 15kb – and a 10kb saving is substantial; particularly if you’re referencing images back to your server rather than embedding them.

Image height and size
Given the size of the email preview window, images should be kept to under 470 pixels wide and 150 pixels high.

Image placement
The reason for using images in email marketing is to grab attention, therefore they should be placed at the very top of the communication rather than halfway down where they may not be seen initially by people using the preview window.

Image blocking issues
Many email services and software allow for users to block images and some have this as a default setting. That’s where the image sizes mentioned also come into play – particularly height. If the image you use is very high and it winds up being blocked; the textual copy may be pushed a long way down the page and not seen; again, this is particularly relevant to people using a desktop email client and preview windows. If you do need to use images that are quite high, another workaround is to not include the image size in the coding – that way, the blocked image placeholder area will be quite small.

Animated gifs and email
Many email clients will display animated gifs, with one (big) exception – Outlook 2007. This version of Outlook no longer uses IE’s rendering engine – it uses Word; so only the first frame will display. If you’re going to use animated gifs, make sure the first frame sums up what you’re attempting to relay.

Include plain text
Related to the image blocking issue, it’s important to not rely totally on images for your blurb. Additionally, some folks just don’t react to images and prefer a little more detail – include some text about your offer below the image. The other advantage of including text is in relation to spam filters. An email that consists solely of images or a single image will likely attract a higher spam score.

Use alt text
If your image is blocked, all is not lost – use the ALT image tag – the alt tag or text attribute briefly describes what the image represents. For example, an alt tag for your blurb might be “New model now in stock”. It just gives the reader an idea of what the offer is about. Here’s what the code looks like for an alt attribute:

Example
<a href=”http://www.example.com”><img border=”0″ src=”http://www.example.com/email-marketing.gif” alt=”Email marketing images – tips”>

Test, test and test again
Testing is becoming an increasingly important part of email marketing – different browsers, email clients and services will render the way an email looks different. It can be a really painful process, but well worth the effort. Set up mail accounts with Yahoo, Gmail etc. and run test sends before mailing to a live list. Also check how the email views in different browsers – most importantly, Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you can, install different email clients on your computer and test how emails look via various applications.

There are many more tips on email marketing images which could be shared but the above should outline the basics of what you need to know.

Do you know what email subscriber you want and the email subscribers you don’t want?

How many of you have set up multiple email addresses through google, just so you can have 3 or 4 “rubbish’ email addresses that you can sign up to mailing lists with, and then another 1 for friends. Your preferential one. How often do you check the 3 or 4 that you sign up to just for mailing lists. It is these emails addresses, when unchecked, that could be harming your database lists as a publisher.

This can prevent your emails getting to the real subscribers. This can create a domino effect, because once the real ones stop getting your emails regularly, they may become inactive with your business.

The reason someone may not be giving you their preferential address is maybe because they just want the incentive that you’re offering. It might also be they don’t want to commit to your company or what you’re offering. Instead they want to put one of their throwaway email addresses in there and check back on it later… at some point. Maybe.

So what can you do about it. You need every email subscriber that subscribes. Reasons: you have probably firstly paid for that lead, and secondly you don’t want these ‘rubbish’ email address harming your ESP, your results or your database. Why not make it irresistible to them to ensure they carry on opening and reading, and then eventually making the email address that they signed up with you, one of their preferential email addresses. Why did they sign up in the first place. Was it for information on a particular topic, was it for competitions and freebies. Whatever it was ensure what you are sending them is relevant. This is your primary way you will keep an email subscriber.

Another key point to ensure your list remains as good as it can, ensure you cleanse regulalry. Only send to those who do open – maybe within a 30 day period, and clean your database of those email subscribers who havent responded after a certain timepoint, maybe 160 days. (this number depends on what you are offering and how often you email them anyway to ensur eyou get a ROI)

Your email subscriber is a valuable commodity for your business. Ensure you research how to keep them effectively.