If you haven’t already embraced the use of animated GIFs in your email marketing, now is the time. GIFs provide a fast, easy, and efficient way to cut through the email inbox clutter and capture your prospects’ and customers’ attention.
What is a GIF?
GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format. They are known for their animation, Animated GIFs works by displaying a series of images that create the illusion of motion and tend to last between 2 to 15 seconds before repeating from the beginning. GIFs have grown into a popular image format due to their wide support across browsers and email clients.
Advantages of using Animated GIF in Email Marketing
Grabs the Attention of Subscribers
Adding a GIF to your email is a great way to grab your subscriber’s attention, point them toward an action you want them to take, or keep them scrolling to make sure they get your full message.
Showcase Products and Services
You know that your product is good. Make sure your subscribers also know it. There’s nothing like an animated GIF to showcase how your product or service works.
Simplify the Idea
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an animated picture is probably worth even more. Use an animated GIF to illustrate a complex idea or show your subscribers that things are even easier than they think.
Disadvantages of GIFs
Lack of Accessibility
Animated GIFs can pose a problem in terms of accessibility for a variety of reasons. Some platforms don’t identify them and these are usually the outdated ones.
Poor Background
If you need to bring more color or some background transparency to your animated content, then an animated GIF may not be the way to go. Some of the gifs are not appropriate and have poor backgrounds.
How to Create Your Own Animated GIF for Email Marketing
You will be surprised at how easy creating and inserting animated GIFs into your emails is. Check out the following GIF tools for creating:
- Creative Techs Tutorial: Build Animated GIFs in Photoshop
- GIF Brewery
- Make a GIF
- Instagiffer
GIFs are a great way in an email to draw attention to something in your email, such as a new product or call to action.
GIF Best Practices For Email Marketing
- Keep GIF Size to a Minimum
While using GIF in email marketing they should be no bigger than 1MB. A big size image can affect the load time or misalign with your email design.
- Optimize for Mobile Users
When figuring out how to send GIF in email, keep in mind that mobile devices can alter email design and display everything at a smaller size. Avoid adding too much text to your GIF so that it’s still easy to understand on a variety of devices.
- Keep your GIFs Accessible
To ensure your GIF is accessible to all audiences, make sure to set the GIF to stop after 5 seconds and ensure there is a way for users to pause the GIF.
- Add a Call to Action in your GIF
Make sure your GIFs support your marketing goals by including a call to action (CTA). Depending on your goals, you might ask them to make an account, return to their cart, request a free quote, or refer a friend to your business, for example.
Conclusion
Animated gifs in email marketing can do wonders for your email campaigns. But always use your GIFs wisely! Subscribers should always be your priority while creating GIFs for your email campaigns. Don’t use it just because you can think about how it’ll benefit your subscribers.
