Avoid Blocked Images in Emails with Inline Images Feature – Email Marketing Blog

• Updated on: 2017-06-25
• Read original article here

Ieva Baranova
What does a perfect email campaign look like? Clear message, thoughtful design, eye-catching pictures… However, blocked images can ruin your email campaign, making emails look very different in subscribers’ inboxes – broken, messy and disappointing. Is there a way to avoid blocked images in emails? We came up with the Inline (Embedded) Images feature.
Why are visuals so crucial when it comes to communicating with subscribers? People tend to scan their emails rather than read them. In our busy world, we cannot afford to waste much time on scrupulously reading every message we receive. Subscribers want to perceive a clear messiage within seconds. This is where images come in handy. Studies have shown that humans are visual creatures: between 80% and 90% of the information received by the brain comes through the eyes, and the rate at which it processes images is an estimated 36,000 images per minute. Impressive, isn’t it?
Why do email clients block images?
Naturally, visuals are a huge part of building any email marketing campaign. Content curation service Trapit says that when asked to identify major trends surrounding content marketing, nearly four-fifths (82%) of marketers believe that content is more likely to be consumed if it is visual, signifying the value of photos, videos, and other visuals. So, images play a considerable role in successful email marketing . But sadly, 60% of email clients choose to block images by default. Why?
To help avoid viewing potentially offensive material (when external content is linked to the message);
To help keep malicious code from damaging the data on clients’ computers;
With low-bandwidth connections, blocking images allows the client to decide whether a particular image warrants the time and bandwidth required to download it.
Fair enough – these are reasonable and clear arguments for blocking images in email. Yet this doesn’t mean you have to rely on subscribers always having to unblock your images. Smart marketers with good intentions deserve to find a way around.
Just one (big) click to unblock messages
Is it really a big deal? Emails reach customers’ inboxes with blocked images by default, meaning the subscriber has to unblock them. A simple click, you may think. But nowadays, when marketers are seriously fighting for precious customer attention, even one additional click can be too much effort to ask.
Luckily, there is a way for your email campaigns to look compelling and flawless when they reach your subscriber. That’s our Inline Images feature!
Inline Images for perfect-looking email campaigns
Inline images is a feature that ensures your email-campaign images display automatically without the necessity of unblocking them.
Your subscribers won’t have to unblock images, as they will already be displayed in the email. Your subscribers will receive beautiful email campaigns with all the images intact, exactly the way you designed them! But why talk about it when we can show it to you? Take a look at these examples of email campaigns with and without the Inline Images feature. See the difference?
If you want your email campaign to look professional and engage with your audience at first glance, you simply can’t afford not to use embedded images. But it’s not only about looks – using Inline Images brings numerous other benefits.
Advantages of the Inline Images feature
Why should you consider using the Inline Images feature? Let’s break it down!
More engaging email campaigns
Images are a great way to make your email campaign appear more attractive. Putting effort into designing a beautiful email campaign can make a great first impression and attract new customers.
Higher click-through rate
By better engaging your subscribers you will also raise your email click-through rate. The more beautiful and alluring your campaign is, the more subscribers will be motivated to click on your links.
Improved brand awareness
Put an image of your company’s logo in every email you send out. That way you will improve your brand awareness. People will be more familiar with your brand when they can see your company’s logo often, with no need to unblock it.
More variations in placing different email elements
If there is a text or call-to-action button in your email template as an image file, subscribers won’t be able to read or engage with your campaign without unblocking the images first.
Less time-consuming
Using inline embedded images you will need to spend less time building your email campaign, because you will be able to use images as a substitute for part of the content and won’t have to duplicate messages in image and text to ensure safe delivery of content.
Help delivering email message
A picture can speak a thousand words. Include images in your email to make your message more focused and clear for your subscribers. Avoid long explanations; include images that explain everything by themselves!
Use of more fonts
As we have already pointed out in our previous blog articles,  Google fonts won’t display if images are blocked. Using inline embedded images takes care of that, allowing you to diversify your email content by picking different, compelling fonts.
Use of more pictures
You can simply use more images than you did before, without having to worry about them being displayed correctly.
Inline Images is a truly helpful feature. However, there are still a few things you may have to take into consideration before using it.
There are also some cons…
Email becomes heavier
If you use encoded images, they are hard coded inside the HTML code and the email will actually be heavier. In order not to exceed limits, you can see the approximate size of your email in the last step of creating your email campaign in the Mailigen system.
Open rate may be misleading
Unblocking images is one of the factors that determines email opens. So, your open rate may appear lower than it actually is.
Higher spam rate
Spammers usually use large images as a text container, because bots and programs that check content cannot read images. So, the feature may give you higher spam rate.
Consider mobile users
Mobile users may check their email on text-only mobile applications, so if your email contains lots of images it may not display correctly.
Some providers still block Inline Images
Be careful when you send your emails to Outlook 2007+, Hotmail and Yahoo!. These email providers are still not on board with embedding images in emails and they will appear blocked.
Anyway, we say – go ahead!
When it comes to engaging email campaigns, dynamic and thoughtful images are a marketer’s best friend. Just take the following into account:
Image size – use heavy images for your Web or landing page and lighter images for your email to increase loading time and avoid spam traps;
Keep the text-to-image ratio to 50/50 or even 60/40 to avoid spam traps and diversify email content for your subscribers;
Add alt text for your images to appear instead of blocked images to ensure the message is still delivered to your audience.
Using the Mailigen Inline Images Feature takes only one click. In the first step of creating a campaign in the Mailigen system, mark the checkbox “Send campaign with Inline Images” and you’re done! Easy, right?
Don’t waste effort making email templates that achieve only half the success that could. Using Mailigen Inline Images feature will benefit your brand awareness, click-through rate and customer engagement, saving you time to perfect your marketing strategy.