JSInstructions to unblock images in multiple emails
How many of you out there have gotten an email from a customer that said the email they put together for you to send isn't showing images in their email? How many have had to look up or write specific instructions tailored for the customer's email? How many find that this situation is a waste of your precious time when you could be doing something more productive?
There's plenty of resources in how to keep images from being blocked in email from a coder's perspective, but I haven't seen much for instructions on how to unblock the images in emails for the end users. There's plenty of email clients and etc. to choose from but I really haven't seen them consolidated in a list rather than surfing for each version in multiple sites. If anyone has a better list put together and broader scope please feel free to share.
I've found one that lists a few but not all of course. Benchmark Display Images In Email
Another resource worthy sharing is Campaign Monitor's Will It Work reference table for image blocking.
Hey Jon - Here's a guide we put together here at Litmus earlier this year: https://litmus.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-email-image-blocking
Hi Matt – Thanks, but I’ve already read that article and know about the alt techniques and etc. We have some stubborn customers and always expect images to appear even with alt text. I know there’s really nothing we can do about it now – aside whitelisting.
I wanted to put together a list of different emails on how to unblock images so they can reference the instructions themselves rather than dealing with them directly. Like a FAQ or Knowledge Base to help streamline productivity.
Right now we are sending out emails that both customers create with multiple ESPs’, and what we create. Unfortunately coding becomes an issue since some of these we don’t make ourselves. We then have to review the code or completely re-code depending on what is given to us. Later they complain when the proof copy received isn’t how they thought it was going to look or looked in their previous tests before handing over the code to us. The last case was before posting here, and ultimately we found that their McAfee settings needed to be changed. MX-Logic kept changing the image paths to new transparent images. (perhaps another issue needed to be addressed)
Not long ago I spent about 2 full work days on a single email client. They used a Mail Chimp template, forgot to use the css inline tool. While investigating the code about an image not lining up with the rest of the content I had to strip out the inline css again and do a step process of elimination to narrow down the issue of why a single image wouldn’t line up. I’m still not 100% sure which attribute or why this was happening but once I removed the inline css attached to the images, they all lined up.
After fixing the email I told the customer what I did, what some of the issues were and how to avoid it in the future and said one size doesn’t fit all. While I saved the day to keep a customer for my employer, I was tempted to further state weighing their options. “Who is your audience for the email, You or your customers?” But I figured that would open another can of worms. But should be said as they don’t know all the technical stuff.
The only other reason why this email drug on so long to fixing it is there are no FREE inbox preview tools. There’s trials and so on, but nothing Really Free without having to pay for it somewhere along the line, and my employer won’t pay for testing. They’d rather push anything out, as fast and much as possible.
Anyways, sorry for the lengthy reply. Just wanted you to fully understand what I’ve been dealing with and looking for alternatives. If you have any other ideas I’m all ears.