AWWhats so bad about image based emails?
From my research and experience I avoid image based emails like a plague. I am tasked with discussing this with many people in my company; designers who want to design the heck out of our emails but don't know too much about restrictions regarding email clients, code, etc. I have to make a case as to why it is bad practice to have image based emails. That is, emails that are almost purely images with little to no actual html text. I understand that gives them all the freedom they want for design, however as far as I know the cons outweigh the pros. For a quick list here are some reasons I may bring up:
- The text on images will not be as clear and crisp as actual html
- Email clients will not really know the content and may be marked as spam
- Because there is no actual text there will not be a text version of the email
- Not every email client renders stacked images correctly, not to mention issues that may arise on mobile
My question for the more experienced people here is this- is my argument valid? Is it really that bad to have image based emails? Why or why not?
I appreciate any feedback on this topic.
EDIT: A lot of time has passed since I posted this and I've learned to find a good balance. However it is still an interesting topic and I'm glad people are talking about it. I'd like to remind everyone that we are talking about an email made up entirely of images.
You already list some good points. I have a feeling the community can go on forever about this topic! I'll focus on performance:
Every image is an extra HTTP request and adds to the file size of the email. People on slow connections (even 3-4 G) might not see images right away, so if the email's value is sequestered in the images, the email is useless until they're downloaded. And it becomes a bigger $$$ problem outside of the first world link.
HTML / CSS is lightweight, cheap to maintain, interoperable, mobile friendly, and a responsible way to design. Ultimately good performance is good design. I'd challenge your designers to use all the tools at their disposal, and that includes knowing what's possible in code. (If only there was an article about why designers should learn to code. Oh right, there's 8,239 of them on Medium).
Oh, and image blocking.
Another reason - inbox search! If the majority of your email's copy is within images, you're providing users with a lot less real text, which means your email may be less likely to show up when someone is searching their inbox.
This makes me think, do email inbox filter check alt attributes on images?
If your image has meaningful content you should be supplying alt text anyway, it's just if filters check them.
Time to investigate!
EDIT: Just realised this is 3 years old.. whoops (curious anyway)
Another issue to think about is that of accessibility. A grid of images is pretty terrible for screen readers ( even worse than emails already terrible markup ).
On top of that a full page of images will load much slower, which can be a serious issue if your readers are on a 2g - 3g mobile connection.
I have seen some really nicely designed emails that are entirely image based and this seems to be "the norm" for a lot of larger brands' promotional emails. As an iPhone user, the images download automatically by default on the Apple Mail app (I believe you can turn the auto download off if you want) and they usually download fast, given that I usually have a 4G LTE signal or I am on WiFi. That being said, I have gotten a few that have behemoth sized images and if it takes longer than a few seconds to download, forget about it, it goes right in the trash for me. But as an email designer and coder, I would say do an a/b test maybe? Create one email that has mostly nicely styled html and then create one that is mostly images and see which one gets more clicks and conversions. Just because the email design looks really snazzy, doesn't always lead to more clicks and conversions. Sometimes it's just all about the subject line, offer and brand trust and recognition. What do others think?
I'd look into the research around non-image opens.
I can't remember the exact number but when gmail enabled images on by default there was lots of discussion about this. I believe Litmus crunched the numbers and based on the changes in opens, estimated that 43 - 47% of emails are opened without images turned on. I don't know about you, but I want that 40+% to get a better experience than alt text.
I've found a happy medium by using background images (w/VML bkg fallback) and using mostly HTML content in front of that image (headlines, body copy, buttons, etc). It can be a little tricky with apps like Inbox on Android which increases the font size and can sometimes push content past the length of the background image. In that case I typically just add a bit of length to the background image. This background image technique allows for a little more design without all the drawbacks of an all image based email.
Hey Nick,
Don't forget to talk about scalability of the work. When you have an all image-based email, any changes or updates to the next Email have to be made to the Creative, then re-sliced, then the image renamed, then the image reloaded, then the file path updated, then the alt text updated.
On a non-image-based email, a copy change is just that, one change, and you're done.
Realistically, sometimes you just can't get around it. Image-based emails can be done in a classy way, though takes a little more time, thought, and practice.
I don't see anyone else has brought this up: We are a global company and we decided to avoid images with text that is part of the image because it means our regional managers who need to localize/translate the text are required to use Photoshop or something to edit the image. Or they will need to hire a local vendor to do it, which is $$. On occasion, however, if an email is not going to be used globally, we will give in to temptation and put the headline in an image. But never the whole email. That seems like an obvious way to reduce the number of people who read, and thus respond to your email.
Excellent point! Unfortunately that argument has not been applicable to my clients, otherwise I would certainly make use of it.
Your image blocking example really sums up the issue with image-only emails, Ted.
Accessibility is another thing. As email designers/builders it's probably not the top of the list for a lot of us, but think it's something to at least be aware of. Sure you can have appropriate alt-tags for all the images in your email, but nothing beats having some live text in there.
ADA Compliance is a HUGE reason to avoid image-based emails like the plague.
https://litmus.com/blog/ultimate-guide-accessible-emails
Accessibility and images are not incompatible. Images are incredibly powerful tools. Don't avoid using them if they make sense for your brand and message. Instead, use accessibility best practices to ensure that you're delivering a coherent message to all of your subscribers.
Great point!
Surprised this got bumped and showed up in a summary email, so I'll contribute.
Some great points were made in the thread - and I thought of #a11y 1st since that's an area that is often neglected, despite law. But I'll submit the idea of making sure you're as disciplined as possible when creating an email entirely via images. My argument will sit around a technical one (beyond rendering).
I spoke about some of this @ Litmus Live Boston 2017 and the idea of being careful around images and making the best choices possible around compressing and format. Even thought we're talking about 100% image emails in the thread, the avg email is apparently around 80% image base, which is not that far. So there really isn't that much wrong with having tons of images, it's knowing what you're up against - like clients, the network, data caps, and being a bit more disciplined.
I found a few new reasons when coding yet another sliced image email. One is fragility - try zooming your browser on a sliced image email where the different slices have to match up - browser zoom math doesn't always get it right. I spent a couple wasted hours trying to troubleshoot why this one email looked wonky for one person.
The other reason would be how it looks in mobile browsers. On initial load mobile email clients either zoom way out or just show the top left corner, but the Android mail app seems to try to zoom out but doesn't quite get it's math right, resulting in wonky slices when you have multiple images on a sliced row.
I'm not sure that reason #1 is going to be very compelling, because as an email consumer (someone who gets marketing emails in my inbox, like we all do) I have to admit I have never seen image-based emails with text that screams "this is a low-resolution image." In other words, I don't really notice any difference, although a professional eye would notice.
Number 2 is of course valid, but then again you can always make use of the alt tag (playing devil's advocate here)
3 - I come from the world of higher ed e-mail, and this argument only became useful for me when colleges and universities started being hit with major fines by the federal government for not complying with accessibility standards (because they receive federal money). You kind of have to make a case about text-only versions in a way that appeals to their sense of "not wanting to get in trouble."
4- This is probably your most compelling argument, and I think all it would take is a quick demo of how horrible image-only emails can look on mobile. Give out statistics on how many people use mobile these days. Show and tell :-)
Alt tags are not a fix for spam filters, especially when there can be 2-4 spam filters with different criteria that your email has to get past before it ever hits your subscriber's email address to get sorted into either the inbox or the spam folder.
As for accessibility, my most compelling statement has been some variation on "I/we don't see a reason to exclude anyone that has expressed an interest in {brand or organization} by signing up for the {newsletter/mailing list/members club/etc}". Then it becomes less of an issue of "we're trying to avoid getting in trouble" and more of "we don't want to exclude people that are currently engaged with our brand/organization". That being said, the "we don't want to get in trouble" argument should be taken much more seriously than it is...
In response to this: Because there is no actual text there will not be a text version of the email
It depends on what your ESP allows/does when email building. For example, MailChimp will generate a text version based off of text (and I think alt text) in the email, but will let you modify/completely change what it generates. If you have an email that is basically one big sliced image with no alt text (which is another bad idea), you can at least type in a text version. However, it is definitely simpler to not have to type out a text version.
I agree with you on all of your other points though. I have been attempting to educate others to these very points for a while now, and the phrase I hate the most is "But {insert big name retailer} only sends out sliced image emails, and they're doing fine/well". My answer to that is to state that we don't have the full story behind their email campaign decisions. Is most of their audience not on mobile devices? Do they have so much in the way of profits that any business they get from emails is just gravy? Is their audience just that loyal (or are the coupons/offers from the emails so good) that the audience doesn't care? Or do the people making the final decisions just not care because they don't see the point and/or find the upfront cost of changing to be too expensive?
Meanwhile, the best arguments (for executives at least) are number/metric based. Around 50% of the total market is viewing emails on mobile devices - how does your audience compare to that? Could part of your potential audience need an accessible email? There is a rough estimate that 20% of the population is living with some form of disability (http://webaim.org/intro/). As most final decision makers tend to be balancing cost versus benefit, any other real statistics that you can come up with can help you make your point.
One strategy I have found to at least move forward is to try to get the designer to do a half-and-half email. Let them do anything they want in a 600px wide image for the very top of the email, but get them to select an acceptable email safe font and color and at least put the point of the email as live text underneath the image. Sometimes, this results in repeating information. This is not ideal, but at least it attempts to move away from the spam filter and accessibility issues, and allows mobile users to have more of a choice whether or not to download images.
Coming from the world of retail, we generate a lot of emails each week with a small staff and don't have the time to code out every email. We rely on a hybrid approach. Although the majority of the email will be image based, we do use snippets whenever possible, especially for buttons.
One benefit of using image based text is that if say a price needs changed after the email has been sent, I can update the graphic. People who haven't opened the email yet will see the correct image. You can't fix the alt text but at least the image will be correct.
yes can confirm that, but at some point we also changed to txt emails, cuz loading times are sometimes horriblé
Kevin Mandeville and I discussed this question in Email Design Podcast #47. You can find our thoughts on it here >>
https://litmus.com/blog/email-design-podcast-47-view-online-links-image-based-emails-and-above-the-fold-buttons
Also another reason, HTML text to image ratio will flag spam filters
Late to this discussion, but it's a valid one.
Your points are very valid, and today most of our users read their work emails on the phone (I work at a uni).
There are a few more points I'd like to add, though:
5. As stated below, people with disabilities will have issues with images instead of properly designed text. And an email should be more about the textual content than fluff (in my opinion).
6. The amount of disk space it takes up. This may not be something we think that much about, but if an email is sent to 70'000 users the amount of physical space will be a lot different depending on if the mail is an image, or properly designed HTML.
7. A lot of ppl block images in their client (I do), because it's utterly annoying when you just want the quick lowdown on content.
Besides not being able to search my inbox (excellent point by Courtney Fantinato), here's another thing that really bugs me: I've seen (and personally know) some brands that create a two (or more) columns layout that is a single image, as wide as the email (600px, sometimes more).
When viewed on mobile, it doesn't matter if the email is responsive: the body copy on those images is almost impossible to read, because that 13px font-size you might be OK with on the image in a desktop client, gets shrunk two or maybe even 3-fold on mobile. And I find myself either zooming with frustration, or sending that email on its way to trash.
Dear User,
I might be late but here some tipps anyway =) Now days it should be better if u use a good balance between text and Images. You have to update your Template very often to make sure that everything is going well. With this sad avoid uising images with text on it if Possible. Its okey to have it on a BTN or Header with ALT text but u should NOT use a paragraph of text on images. You need to be abble to change things quikly.
I also would strongly recommend to use Mobilefriendly first. Most people are on Mobile these days. So what about retina display? well they cale up your graphics anyway, so if you have a 600px image it will be rendered ~340px width. To save loading times cut as much as possible away from white space or save your imiges slightly bigger and with 96ppi/dpi. This will help for my responsiv emails I use ~460 & 420px width on my images in colums. That way if u use a fluid Newsletter design you dont need to put extra images for each device.
Also note that around 100KB some email providers like gmail & YYahoo will cut the code, this way u have a broken Newsletter =( Try to avoid this. Also note code + Image size = Email size in KB
The images' file sizes do not contribute to Gmail's 102kb limit, only the amount of code.
@Courtney Fantinato
Yes you are right this info is out of date. Sorry for that, anyway its good not to use a 1920x1080px background IMG on a 750px width Newsletter. For me it is very important that the loading time are fast =)
I've heard for years that image-based emails are an issue, but agree that they are very common in my inbox. Would love to see more discussion on this.
Given that Gmail automatically downloads images by default now, I don't think they are bad like they used to be. The bad thing about them in my opinion is if you have big file size images with people trying to download them on slow mobile networks. But i don't seem to ever have a problem with that myself. I personally think the best promotional emails are image based. But used sparingly. Just one top hero image and the rest HTML I think is a good compromise for design and load time. The new thing is animated Gifs that look like movies in emails. The file size is huge, but they look awesome! But do they actually get more people to buy, I'm not sure.
I have no complaints against using images in emails. The problem lies with emails that consist entirely of one or more images that hold all of the contents of the email. I got around 49 of these emails in my work email account's spam folder in December alone, and none of them were solicited. Continuing to do something that is both the cheapest option and a common practice for spammers/phishers just doesn't make sense to me when doing something better leads to so much more subscriber engagement.
I find that people with poor data on their phones and really old versions of Email clients aren't the ones you want clicking on your emails anyway. At least in tech.
Most Images can be compressed to be lightweight and many automation platforms allow you to include plain text separately. Again, I don't know who in this world uses plain text and links don't even work in plain text anyway so chances for success are low there regardless.
I think we see image based emails a lot in e-commerce because those emails don't need much copy. Just 50% OFF BLACK FRIDAY SALE! Image based emails work in this instance because the font more often than not is large and therefore there are no issues with how it renders. I would totally bet the performance of a nicely designed, concise message in an image based email against some of the ugly, text-heavy, B2B HTML emails I get.
I find that people with poor data on their phones and really old versions of Email clients aren't the ones you want clicking on your emails anyway. At least in tech.
wow.
to be frank, there are many in North America who have poor data plans let alone live in areas that do not support 4G broadly. Some were co workers of mine. Added, some have made a habit of using browsers like Opera (compresses images that much more) or turning off images because they quite often come in too big, and that's the dev's fault, not the user's.
Why do you want to punish the people stuck behind a bureaucracy that mandates only Windows PCs and Outlook? Outlook on Windows has not significantly changed it's rendering of emails since 2007, when it made it arguably worse. Or how about those users in a company where the people in control don't see enough value in getting newer software, and so they are stuck using something that renders worse? Or how about a person who is sick of using up all of their data plan on large images in emails, so they turn off images as a last resort before they unsubscribe? There are many reasons why someone might be in a given situation or make a certain choice. Saying that you "didn't want their business anyway" seems very short sighted.
I don't like to jump on a bandwagon, but "aren't the ones you want clicking on your emails anyway. At least in tech." is a strange comment.
I want all the 15k employees and 65 k students here reading the information sent.
As there isn't a unified message board or client environment, a good email design is the only route to go.
And image based emails is not that route; I have shut off images for all my own mails, not for data or client limitations but because I want the information readable and not hidden.
And then we have the more important issue of text to speech. But that is a beast we have a department specializing in.
Pretty much everyone, at some point, will see your emails with images unavailable - so really it's about ensuring there is a good experience for when that happens
I know this thread is old, but I feel the need to respond because the state of email design is still so horrible.
I still use all image-based emails (with the exception of possibly having a paragraph of separate text if it is necessary). I will explain why:
Email clients are STILL not good about rendering styled text. This is particularly true of Gmail. I’ve found that text looks different in Gmail (both the browser version AND the app version on both iOS and Android) than it does in any other email app. Why Google?
Gmail is overzealous about marking things as spam anyway. I’ve had emails that are all text, all images, half and half, 1/3 images, ALL marked as spam by Gmail. It doesn’t matter and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to why it’s doing it. No other email client behaves this way. So, there is no guarantee (or even a better chance) that your email will not be marked as spam if it has actual html text in it. Whoever tells you there is a better chance is lying (at least where Google is concerned).
Image download size. I simply don’t understand how people can complain about bandwidth on mobile devices in email when images on websites are out of control in size. The responsive web is antithetical to nicely optimized images. Everything has to be 2-3 times the size it should be to look nice on mobile devices because of the higher screen resolution. So, do people just not browse the web on their phones because they are still afraid of bandwidth overages? Of course not.
Lastly, A/B/C testing. We’ve tested marketing emails using all images, text+images and all text. In every single case that we’ve done this the all-image emails have won out on both click throughs and conversions for ecommerce sites. Conversions = money for our clients, so if there is any small amount of emails going into someone's spam filter it is irrelevant compared to making money for our clients and keeping them happy.
I REALLY look forward to the day when all email clients render things the same way (and stop using nested tables). It doesn’t seem like that will ever happen until the basis of how emails are sent fundamentally changes somehow to force all software companies to have to rewrite their apps to read emails properly.
Oh well.
They are both problems. We just happened to be talking about email here. And, tbh - if ppl knew what they were downloading, i'm more than certain they would think twice. I was just on a site looking for hours of operation, and this happened: https://twitter.com/HenriHelvetica/status/941331513588645889 This is not an uncommon case. The talk I gave @ Litmus Live BOSTON was ported from the one I usually give @ conferences on websites - where we can talk about lazy loading as a solution.
The point is the following: making the correct decisions. How you deal with the images is the key. A 6MB GIF should be outlawed. But they happen. Picking the correct format if key. A 100% image based email has it's benefits and drawbacks. Engagement is awesome on one side, but phone hardware is another. And BTW, it's not about bandwidth - it's latency mostly. Something you feel much more w/ image assets.
I tend to side with @JZ. If decision is up to me, I would rather not have image based emails.
But its the clients who decide. They complaint about Corporate Identity (non web-safe fonts), they complain about emails received looks different among email clients (webmail, mobile app, desktop client whatnot).
So, for PITA clients (most of them are), I will just made them image based emails.
@Henri. H.
6MB GIFs should not be outlawed, but this is way to huge even on Dectop i would think twice about it to put it in. If you happen to be using GIFs try to keep under 2MB
@ALL
While we talking about GIFs, is there a better algorithm then the one from adobe? Cuz I would like zo have a better one like changing some pixels of my own
Everything I said above still stands for me today. Gmail has not gotten any better, despite Google saying they supposedly updated it and made it better. And I still get all kinds of emails marked as spam that should not be.
HTML text also still looks horrible in emails.
In regards to Gmail marking everything as spam - sure you or your client hasn't gotten blacklisted by Gmail's spam filter? Sounds like you or your client might have a reputation issue instead of an email contents issue. If this is the case, continuing to send out all image-based emails might be exacerbating your problem. I'm not judging in any way - I've had to deal with that exact situation in the past and it's a long hard slog to attempt to change.
I completely agree about not being able to guarantee that no email will ever be filtered out by spam filters (had to explain that to clients too).
@Julie Campbell No. Gmail does not mark everything as spam. Only some things and it does so completely randomly. Neither my company nor clients (plural) are blacklisted. Gmail does what it wants regarding marking things as spam. It will mark something as spam even if I have the sender in my contacts (even if it's a regular email from a relative and not a company sending out a bulk email).
No one ever knows how big the GIFs are - but they're a lossless format. That's the issue. If you want to use an anim GIF, keep the sequence as short as possible, as well as small dimensions. I don't believe you're getting more engagement from a longer one. The GIF encoder is old and no real work is done to improve it really - as there's no immediate need to do so.