May03
outlook 2007, alt text, background color
Background Colors Can Help Improve Your Open Rates
Take a look at this example from Simple Shoes.
The default background colors alone—not the alt text—compelled me to display images. Which is not to say that alt text isn’t important… this email has alt text within the main call to action, which reads “Collect: Our Friends Over At Good Magazine Took Over Our Blog And Left Us With Some Really Great Stories. Check Out What They Have To Say About Water Waste, Music And Earth Day.“ but this was too long for most email clients to render. Another lesson learned in brevity with alt text.
Regardless, this email succeeds where most fail in terms of readability and eye-catchiness in email clients who block images by default.
I received this in my Gmail inbox and after testing in other major clients, this email looks the same in all but ONE email client. Can you guess which one doesn’t display correctly? Give up? Ok…
Outlook 2007:
Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.
Not every email campaign or brand can get away with using color this liberally, but most can at least try. Always remember to test your email with images off, as the majority of desktop and web clients don’t render them by default.
Posted by Bryan Quilty on May. 03, 2011
Nice. It’s a shame since the email could have had plenty of text in it. But it’s definitely one way to make lemonade out of one giant image of a lemon.
Posted by Tommy on 05/17/2011 01:45 PM