Image
blocking in e-mail servers is a common
practice at the ISP level, including
Microsoft's MSN Hotmail and Google's
Gmail, but e-mail marketers are not
totally optimized for this effort,
according to a new study by the DMA's
Email Experience Council (EEC).
The EEC
and SubscriberMail, the sponsor of this
study, surveyed 472 marketing executives
in March and found that 23% of the
e-mails from this study were completely
unreadable in an inbox environment. In
addition, only 47% of the survey
respondents said that their company had
taken action to help with image
rendering.
“For
most b-to-c companies, HMTL e-mails are
still considerably more effective than
text-only e-mails, so marketers are
right to design their e-mail with
images,” said Chad White, director of
retail insights and editor-at-large for
the EEC. “However, many e-mail clients
and ISPs now block images by default
because of concerns about image-based
spam.”
There
are a number of things that marketers
can do to make their e-mails readable
when images are blocked, according to
White. Using alt tags, designing e-mails
with as much HMTL text as possible, and
using a preheader text could work.
“They
can also ensure that the images in their
e-mails render by encouraging
subscribers to whitelist them during the
sign-up process and in their welcome
e-mails,” White added.
Interestingly, 42% of the 104 top online
retailers included in the study are
designing e-mails that were “a good mix
of HTML text and images,” and only 63%
used alt tags, a technology that helps
with image reading.
