In the last 20 years, the use of images has grown a lot. At the onset of the Dialog Insight platform, emails consisted solely of text. Now, emailing is represents a rich media that includes personalized, dynamic and animated images. Other channels also emerged offering enriched communications like RCS (rich SMS), Mobile Push, WhatsApp, and many others. Therefore, knowing how and when to use images in online communications is important.
Images draw the readers attention helping to improve message engagement. Communications filled only with text force the contact to read the message in its entirety to understand the meaning of the communication. On the other hand, communications with images allow users to skim the text and quickly understand its meaning in relation to the picture. As it is often said "A picture is worth a thousand words," this saying is particularly true in the context of digital messages. Recipients will often not read through the entire text, therefore making the picture one of their primary source of information.
Even if it is recommended to use images, using them comes with certain considerations to ensure proper render in the recipients mailbox.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Image Size
The dimensions and format of images directly determine the file size of the image. Although the file size does not directly add to the weight of the email, bigger images can take longer to load and require the mobile data for contacts opening the email from a smartphone. Therefore, we recommend keeping the image :
- Dimensions between 600px and 1200px
- Resolution of 72dpi
- Ratio under 2x its original to not be pixelated
Text in Messages
For many different reasons, the email received could not display the image, it is therefore important that the email make sense without it. The best way to achieve this is to use an alternative text that will appear if the image doesn't load.