The suppression of pictures in emails is a big challenge for email marketing.

It’s therefore crucial for marketers to examine and optimize their email strategy appropriately. Here are some tips on what you should take into consideration to get optimum results:

  • Explain it happens to your customers: They have to understand the common reasons for image rejection and its resulting disadvantage. Educate them further on how their pictures can be displayed. Stress the importance of informing all receivers within the registration process and in following messages about the fact that many common email providers hide the pictures according to standards. Encourage them to go around this mechanism by including the return address of your company in their address directory or by clicking on the appropriate button in the browser. In order to motivate your customers to want to see your pictures, you should show with the registration some sample illustrations. And something else: As there are for sure some receivers who in general never want to receive images, there should be the offer to choose only text emails, too.
  • Introduce relevance methods: Most consumers indicate that they “sometimes” open pictures in permission-based emails. This statement indicates that even if the receiver recognizes his relationship with the sender, it has to be pro-actively canvassed attention for each individual message. Therefore, all communication has to demonstrate relevance to “earn” the activation of the pictures. Here, progressive relevance methods like for e.g. segmentation can be helpful.
  • Optimize content: In order to improve the chances of success for your message, in case your images are rejected, you should provide a balanced proportion of pictures and texts. Use the text to get the advantages of your offer across to the receiver and motivate him, and use the picture to trigger action. Do not make the mistake of solely relying on pictures. Also, do remember to integrate links that allow for the presentation of your message as well as your website.
  • Use the forward-button to friends and transaction-referred communication: Consumers are quite agreeable to activate pictures in emails from friends or family members. For this reason you should encourage your receivers to forward your message. In addition, email marketers should consider that with transaction emails, the pictures are much more often activated than in the case of advertisements.
  • Observe the activities of the providers: Be constantly informed about the image suppression procedures of your provider. It is particularly important to know the subtle distinctions between the various picture suppression methods of email providers as only in this way can you react adequately.



By Daniela La Marca