E-Mail Design: Prepare for Broken Graphics
Morgan Stewart, director of strategic service for Indianapolis-based e-mail service provider ExactTarget, estimates that 10%-20% of e-mail images are not rendering. Image blocking is causing such havoc that the phrase “e-mail creative” might be considered an oxymoron. After all, if the inbox providers are blocking images, what can possibly be creative about it? Turns out, quite a bit. One of the biggest mistakes merchants make in e-mail creative is simply repurposing their print direct mail creative. Getting all the necessary sign-offs is considered too much of a pain to warrant designing an e-mail campaign from scratch, says Jay Schwedelson, corporate vice president of Worldata. “The ‘let’s-just-get-it-out’ mentality is rampant.” Think about it: If you’re simply going to repurpose print direct mail for e-mail, you might as well not send the campaigns at all.