At MDirector, we understand the importance of visual tools in email marketing newsletters.
For this reason, we are going to give you a series of recommendations for best practice when it comes to optimising how you use images in your sent items.
Sizes & ideal weight
Although you can use our Drag&Drop editor and CSS to edit image sizes and dimensions, we recommend ensuring that the original version of the image you wish to send is the same as the one you send to your contacts. This is due to the fact that a lot of our clients and email providers do not visualise styles in the same way, which means that some clients like Outlook receive an unconfigured image if the original image is larger or smaller than the template.
Bearing this in mind, we also recommended avoiding images that are extremely large or small. If the image is too large, it will probably take a long time to load, therefore creating delivery problems, especially if your contact tries to download it using a mobile device.
On the other hand, if the image is too small, your contact will receive it in low resolution and this will lead to an unfavourable user experience.
|
TEMPLATE |
SIZE |
|
100% |
600px |
|
50% |
300px |
|
33% |
200px |
The same situation occurs with the weight of an image. It is important to avoid excessive weights, as these images take a long time to download and use a lot of mobile data. Additionally, most anti-spam filters also measure total message weight, meaning that heavier images are much more likely to end up in the spam folder.
When it comes to image weight, a range of different opinions exist as to the perfect size, and this tends to range from 15KB to 1MB. At MDirector, we recommend that the weight does not exceed 100KB per image or a total of 500KB for all the images on your template.
Accepted formats
We recommend using JPG/JPEG, GIF & PNG formats, bearing in mind that the latter can cause issues for clients using antiquated email services as it is designed for the visualisation of transparent images (transparencies) that are often heavier in content than other formats like JPG.We also recommend bearing in mind that if you decide to use GIFs, some clients, including Outlook, will only be able to see the first photogram. To avoid issues, we recommend ensuring that the key message is communicated in the first photogram.
Background images
While you do have the option of using images instead of our usual background, this is not recommended for newsletter templates due to the lack of compatibility for the majority of our email clients.
For example, Outlook 2007-2013 does not display background images. Meanwhile, the Android 4.4 Gmail app doesn’t fully display background images and they are displayed as solid colour blocks. Gmail and Inbox by Gmail are also incompatible with these types of backgrounds.
Blocked images & Alt Text
The vast majority of email clients use systems that automatically block images and this is especially common for corporate email domains. For this reason, we recommend optimising images through the use of Alt Text, which means your contact can read a description of the image if their email provider doesn’t automatically download it.
Proportional distribution of content
As an additional recommendation, MDirector recommends that the content you create contains a well-proportioned combination of images, text and other features, using a ratio of 50/50 or 60/40 for text and images / other elements like buttons, logos and shapes.
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