Body Background Images Can Add Depth To Your Email
If you’ve followed this blog for the past couple of years, you know that I’m a big proponent for the removal of background images in email design. This is all due to the popularity of unsupported clients such as Outlook ‘07 and even Gmail to a certain extent. Although, sometimes a series of events will take place that will lead you to change your whole perspective on things.
In this case, that perspective-altering event was visiting Dylan Boyd’s killer Email Wars blog. The post that really piqued my interest included a screenshot of a BEEEAUTIFUL email from Columbia. The forest-landscape background totally threw me for a loop. As far as background images go, they usually consist of a gradient or repeating image, but rarely do I ever see photo-realisitc backgrounds in the bodies of emails. It caught my attention to say the least.
I then remembered that the geniuses at CampaignMonitor discovered a method of getting background images to display in the body of an email. So even this email could be displayed as intended in Outlook ‘07. Win.
I think this should be an example for creative online marketing and advertising departments to stretch their email designs out a bit. Try incorporating big, sweeping background images. I think most B2C email campaigns could benefit from at least testing this.
Have you seen any other brands using photo-realistic background images in the body of their emails? Provide examples in the comments.
Posted by Bryan Quilty on Oct. 07, 2009
Comments
Pix, I’m still on the hunt for the HTML of the email. I’ll keep ya posted on my findings!
Posted by Bryan Quilty on 10/12/2009 09:15 AM
I’ve found the link to the email on their website. Find it here: http://view.newsletter.columbia.com/?j=fe5b167176670d797c11&m=fef61675776d03&ls=fdec1c7177670d7472137474&l=fe69157674650d7d7615&s=fe6211747162057c751c&jb=ffcf14&ju=fe27167471600c79741376&r=0
Posted by Bryan Quilty on 10/12/2009 12:07 PM
Thanks Bryan. I used the HTML and ran it thru our testing engine. It seems this approach doesnt render the Body background image (of the landscape) at all in outlook 2007.
This is because the background-image: url(‘ ‘) tag is not supported in outlook 2007.
On the upside the design degrades beautifully, because it is not essential to the structure of the design.
So my recommendation when using this approach, or the approach from he guys at CampaignMonitor is to use sparingly and make sure the design makes sense with the no backgound image as well. (For outlook 2007)
Thanks for your help on this,
Pix
Posted by Pix on 10/13/2009 02:18 AM
BTW - The Campaign monitor approach does not work with outlook 2007 service pack 2 either - so the article above is not entirely accurate.
Posted by Pixi on 10/13/2009 02:20 AM
Interesting thoughts, I’ve never given too much thought to background images in emails. However, I do agree that with the proper usage they can provide depth and a good effect.
Posted by Consumer Mailing Lists on 10/19/2009 12:13 AM
Hey man - great post, was wondering if you have a link to their online version so I could see the code of how they did it? - or even the email itself if you could fwd it?
Sweet thanks
Pixi
Posted by Pix on 10/08/2009 08:57 AM