Millions of companies are now cottoning on to the power of email as a marketing tool. It’s becoming more and more important for companies to distinguish themselves across a cluttered market place and one of these techniques is making their email as creative as possible. However this has it’s downsides as well as its upsides…
Many people immediately think that packing their email with as many product images and as little text as possible that this will entice users to buy their products. This is all well and good but this obviously requires the email to actually get to the inbox first; which is easier said than done.
Firstly, this certainly isn’t recommended as being best practice because in terms of deliverability, the majority of Spam Filters check whether the ratio of typed text to images is at an acceptable level. If not then the email will be classed as junk and not reach the inbox.
Therefore by choosing to design the email with ‘as little text as possible’ you risk not only losing a high percentage of your mailing list to the junk folder, but also risk alienating customers who; choose not to download images, have disabilities, use screen-readers etc…
Now this doesn’t mean that your email has to contain reams and reams of text…far from it. With a bit of design know-how and prior planning you can create a striking email with a nice balance of text and images.
Would you rather get into the inbox and at least have the chance of engaging with your mailing list, or for the sake of a few images, not even get past the junk folder?
From Stephen Hill