Basics of Using Images in Email Communications

Email Marketing

Images help readers identify with your emails quickly. From a branded logo to photography, they add interest and can appeal to viewer’s emotions. Using images in email communications helps to get your point across more quickly than with text-only messages.  And, when used as part of an integrated marketing campaign, it’s even more important that the email look and feel exactly like the other media in your campaign, so imagery is key.

The types of images to use in emails include logos, product shots, photography to support an article, maps, graphs, charts or a scanned signature. You can’t just copy and paste an image into your email, it needs to be stored somewhere first, either on your own website or in an image library supplied by your email service provider. Images need to adhere to file type, size and dimension requirements. In most systems you can’t add special effects to an image after you add it into an email, but you can change its dimensions, alignment, link destination, and caption.

The challenge with email images is that sometimes recipients will not be able to view them because the email system they (or their company) uses disables images automatically or does not allow them to enable images in your email. To best accommodate this situation, follow these best practices for using images in emails:
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• Use mostly text. This decreases the likelihood that your email will go directly to spam.
• Become a known sender so your email (and images) isn’t blocked.
• Include a description of the image (ALT text) that will appear in place of the image if it does not display.
• Include a link that reads “Have trouble viewing this email?” to allow recipients to view your email in HTML.

​Constant Contact is a popular and powerful email marketing service provider. For more information including detailed instructions on using images in emails, download their Image Reference Guide from the Resources Learning Center of their website at www.constantcontact.com.

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