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Image blocking or image suppression is a necessary topic to address in regards to email marketing. By having a better understanding of what it is, how it works, and how to avoid it, you will have a greater chance of success of your email messages being read by your recipients.
What is image blocking?
In the past, software and email services scanned the text to ensure that the recipients would not receive spam messages. Over time, spammers have changed their approach and added codes or text into images to get their messages sent and read as a way to bypass the technologies that were previously blocking their text only messages. Thus, for quite some time, this image spam did quite well and quickly gained popularity.
Because of this, spam messages containing images for male enhancement drugs could sneak in and potentially be read by children, and/or it was great way for spammers to introduce viruses or corrupt data into the computers of others.
Thus, software companies and email services adapted with the changes of the techniques of spammers, and they came up with a process of protecting their recipients by “image blocking”, ensuring the safety and well being of its recipients and their computers.
How does image blocking work?
Depending on the software of email service, image blocking can occur in a variety of ways. Usually, it occurs by default, and there are 3 possible ways of accomplishing that. They are:
- By immediately blocking all images,
- By allowing images to be displayed only from approved senders, and
- By allowing images to be displayed in all emails, with the exception of those that are sent to the spam folder.
Because this is now a common feature on most people’s computers, for those sending emails, the need to find a way around image blocking is becoming more of a necessity.
How can you (the sender) avoid image blocking?
The first thing that you want to accomplish when sending an email is having your recipient read it. Without them reading it, the time and effort that you put forth in creating an email with information about your valuable product or service is wasted. Below is a list of tips that can be applied to your email creating process to raise the chances of your email being read.
| | Tip #1: Create a familiar “From” line.
Make sure when adding your information into the “From” line that the information found there is not your own personal name, but the name of your company, product, or service that you provide or that you are more well known by. For example, do not have it say, “From: Jennifer Jones”. Instead, have it say, “From: Viper Mailer”.
Tip #2: Create an intriguing “Subject” line.
You subject line is one of the first things that people will read. A good “Subject” line can make or break your chances of having your email read. Thus, a short, intriguing subject line is vital. It should include who you are and what you are offering in less than 50 characters. For example: Instead of saying something like, “Subject: Sale”, try something like, “Subject: Viper Mailer’s 2-Day Email Marketing Sale!”
Tip #3: Implement the use of different colors, font sizes and font styles.
Varying different colors, font sizes, and styles is an excellent way of adding a bit of spice to your email. Don’t get carried away, though. You want your email to look organized and congruent. Additionally, it is important to research what colors and fonts are most used and accepted by most emails to ensure that the computers of your recipients will accept them.
Tip #4: Do not use large images at the beginning of your email.
If you have an image first and your recipient uses an image blocking option, there will be nothing visible in their viewing pane. Thus, using text first is important to draw the attention of your recipient. If they open the email, realize it is from you and how valuable your products and/or services are, they can then choose to allow your images to appear or view the images further down in your email.
Tip #5: Provide an eye-catching image using the ALT Text option.
With an email marketing service provider, like Viper Mailer, there is an option to add images using a special HTML code that is referred to as the ALT Text option. It’s a fairly simple approach to adding images to your email because most email marketing service providers will do it for you. What you (the sender) need to do is provide the image, if your recipient has an image block on their emails, upon opening your email, the recipient will receive instructions on how to open the images that you have provided.
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It is important to be aware of image blocking before sending out your emails. You want to make the most of the valuable time that you spend creating your informative and business building emails. By creating vibrant, colorful, emails with exciting graphics and images, while keeping in mind the image blocking options of the email services of your recipients, the chances of your email being received, read, and acted upon will have a higher rate of success.
For more information about starting, maintaining, and growing your very own email marketing system, please visit our article library for a list of additional topics. |
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