Why You Need to Nail Your Visuals in Email Marketing

Is it necessary to add visuals in email marketing?

The answer is a big YES.

visuals
Photo by Gracia Dharma on Unsplash

As a witness to the ever-changing trends, marketers should know that visual breaks the monotonous element in email marketing. It has the magical power of appeasing the audience than only text content. And statistics prove it right:

People remember 30% of what they see, compared to 20% of what they hear, and 10% of what they read. Just think a moment, how often as a customer you have been attracted to bright marketing visuals? Probably many times!

Images are processed by the human brain 60,000x faster than text.

Even David Ogilvy, the father of advertising, once stated:

If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.”

And the majority of the consumer crowd likes to have a visual presentation of the message by their favorite brand.

So, what are the best benefits of using impressive visuals in email marketing?

It can hold the reader’s attention for a longer time

We all are aware, how the marketing and sales emails from brands overload the inbox.  As a recipient, if we don’t find it relevant, then we’d never open the email or delete it forever. Also, if the content is not interesting after opening, then we’d instantly move on to the other.

So, what is considered interesting?

It is an exciting content, with bright and interactive visuals. The pictorial representation or images can mesmerize the audience and make them stay for a longer time to read the content.

Right engagement process

You can write the best piece of content, but the content is an utter failure, if it can’t engage the audience. Visuals in different forms have the charisma to engage the audience.

Recipients feel brands are genuinely interested interacting with them, thus, are motivated to read the content.

Comprehensible message

Pictures speak a thousand words!

Adding images in the email, relevant to the message, can help the audience easily understand the message, without even reading the text message. This because, as we know, pictures process information faster than only plain text. Thus, you should never forget to include visuals.

2021 would be the year of visuals; brands would be dabbling with innovative email marketing strategies and increased customer-relevant visuals in their campaign. You should also brush up your strategy to include the same.

Some of the best ways through which you can nail the visual strategy are:

Adding a relevant video in email marketing

Why 50% of consumers are interested in watching the video content of the brands they support? The reason is simple. Videos give more clarity and an in-depth knowledge of a product or service.

Here in the below video email marketing, you can see how the marketer weaves the content:

email 1
Source: bizzabo.com

B2B organizations often conduct events to generate leads for their sales team. And the video here conveys how they can do it the right way. Check the statement,” This Sunday prices jump to $999, so if you act quickly you can save up to $300.” It is a trigger that motivates the buyer to purchase the ticket. The act of conveying the message is what differentiates this video. They even tweaked what’s in store for the attendees.

Having a balanced approach

While visuals are important, keep in mind that adding too much of it could take away the essence of email marketing. An email content should be short, easy to grasp, and relevant to the audience. This process makes recipients take the right action.

One can follow the example of the Netflix email campaign:

email 2
Source: furiarubel.com

As you can see, the image immediately catches the attention of the consumer. They easily understand the purpose of the email campaign. The content that succeeds, supports the image by illustrating it precisely.

The rule for any email marketer is to have a balanced approach in designing the content, i.e., the right proportion of text and visual content. Some brands believe in having 80% text and 20% visual content.

You can follow the same or develop the right ratio as per your brand, but never deviate too much from the rule.

The empty space in the email

You need to visualize the final email. Sometimes, we ignore mistakes that affect the aesthetics of email, for example, the huge blank space in all the corners of the email.

Yes, you understood right! The white space what we mean.

Ensure to leverage this space for the campaign. While it might not immediately impact the readability, but if you can read their mind, a disproportionate design hampers consumer’s trust. As a marketer, you should also look into improving the look and feel of your service; even it is about sending promotional or sales emails of your products.

Including GIF

It’s better to include GIF in the email content to have better interaction with the customer. A dynamic or interactive image hooks them longer on the content.

But many marketers don’t approve of using animation, GIF images. This, they feel, takes away the professional touch of the email. Here, they should acknowledge having a bland email would also do no good. The same design, content, message becomes boring over time.

When marketers spice up the email campaign via this innovative strategy- the visual and moving images, recipients also feel that they’re viewing something new and thus would spare time to read it.

Making images mobile-friendly

With a high number of smartphone users in USA, it is important marketers use the right images that are easily viewed on mobiles.

In the marketing industry, the first thing that matters is whether the content is clicked and receiving the required views. A good content with the best images, optimized for mobiles, makes it all easy.

One can’t expect good conversions sans all these features.

Making the right use of Alt-text

Alt-text in emails helps recipients to understand the images who couldn’t see it for technical reasons. As a marketer, you don’t have to worry if the recipients couldn’t see the images as they still could see the purpose of the image.

Find the below example, how a brand leveraged the alt tags:

email 3
Source: cdmginc.com

In this email, you can see, the image is not loaded properly, and the recipient can see the alt-text content, which is “register now.”

Another alt-text content, you can see at the top of the email, “From Kristina Leroux at Nonprofit Marketing guide.”

Personalizing brand in visual marketing

This is quite an innovative idea.

You’d promoted your product via the best images, but have you tried personalizing the brand like, including the work culture, employees in action, and others in your email campaign.

Some might say, this is branding, but if branding could help your visual email marketing, then there is nothing wrong. The best images give a deeper and first-hand view of what goes on behind making a great product or service.

Hard-working employees, enthusiastic work, and so on. Recipients would eventually fall in love with your product. Isn’t it that you finally want?

Choosing the right color backdrop

The backdrop color in an email campaign needs to be seriously looked into. Adding only images wouldn’t resolve the visual challenges. You should see the design gets into the recipient’s minds, so they feel like seeing it repeatedly.

Below you can see the example, the brand putting extra effort in aligning the backdrop color with the email image.

email 4
Source: business2community.com

Key Takeaway

A better open rate and click rate leads to increased conversions. And it’s because you added the right visuals in the content.

The entire process starts with analyzing the best visuals for email. When you shoot out the campaign, customers instantly connect with the relevant content; they read it and further take the desired action. Thus, it improves business results.

Conclusion

Email marketing would grow by leaps and bounds in the future. Undoubtedly, every marketer should look into the right tactics and strategies to further accelerate the process.

Visual marketing is one of the facilitators in this campaign. It would enhance the functioning of the entire marketing. The blog revolves around some of the tricks you could integrate into your email campaign to generate the desired results, while also experimenting with some of your tactics!


About the Author

Robert Jordan

Robert Jordan, a seasoned marketing professional with over 10 years of experience, currently working as Media Relations Manager at InfoClutch Inc. Have expertise in setting up the lead flow for budding startups and takes it to the next level. Have a deep interest in Email Marketing, B2B & Technology related discussions. Always open for new ideas & discussions.

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