5 Reasons why you shouldn’t send one big image in your email campaign

So you've just asked a graphic designer to create a fantastic new brochure and you also want to send it’s message via email too. You think it’s far easier just to save the brochure as single large JPEG, whack in your email campaign, and send it to your thousands of subscribers. Well, this makes my mind flit to that scene in Predator when Arnie whacks the alien with a big a stick and soon realises it’s a “Bad Idea”. We explore below the top 5 reasons why you shouldn't do this.

Reason 1: Spam Filtering

Servers spam filters are more likely to mark the email as spam if it’s very image heavy, and having 1 single image is about as heavy as you can get. This can really damage your read rates because your email will often go direct to the users spam box, without passing Go, and without collecting £200. This is enough reason to not do it, but there are more.

Reason 2: Image Loading

For the spam filters that don’t trap your email. A smaller few will get to see the image arrive in the inbox, but not perhaps in the way you think they will see it! A lot of popular email systems such as Gmail and Outlook block images from showing by default, so all your users will see is a big empty space with probably your unsubscribe text being one of the only textual elements. What are you going to click if you get emails like this?

Reason 3: Device Compatibility

We now live in an age where more and more people use their mobile phones and tablets to check email. One issue with larger images is the fixed nature of how they are placed. Any users viewing the email on a mobile could find only part of the image showing or being squashed and unreadable.

Reason 4: Limiting Links

So your email has made it past the spam filters, and of the remaining people some have actually loaded the image. Now they get to read (see) the email and respond to your call to action messages. However having one single image means only having one single link from your content, limiting your opportunity. This also has the knock on effect of reducing your tracking statistics and heat maps. Allowing you to determine what works and what doesn't.

Reason 5: Size

Finally we come down to total size of the email, yes you can link the image from your website or campaign software as opposed to embedding the image in the email. But your users still have to download the image. If it takes a long time to download, they may very well just move on to the next email in their inbox, or worse, unsubscribe and move on to the next email in their inbox, and even worse, that could be a competitors email.

How sending single images as email campaigns will damage your email strategy

You've worked hard to build a list of subscribers over the years, is it really worth taking the easy option? Below are some of the reasons not to:

• People may never see the image and will deem your emails as useless and unsubscribe.
• Users may just report your email as spam.
• It might get marked as spam so most of your list never even sees the email.
• If the image looks bad on a user's device, it could damage their image of your company.
• You will still pay your email provider to send the email and so could be throwing money away.
• Your list will degrade each time you do this, wasting all that hard work building the contacts.

OK, I’m convinced to do it properly, but I need more help.

If you want to find out more about how to maximise your email campaigns, give us a call on 01952 897444 and have a chat with us or drop us a message. We have designed many effective email campaigns for a wide variety of customers over the years and will be happy to do the same for you.