Email marketing campaigns often benefit from visually dynamic features, like memes and gifs. That said, simply including a random gif in an email doesn’t mean readers will respond to it more positively.
If you want to know how to insert a gif into an email in a way that actually boosts the effectiveness of your campaign, keep the following tips in mind.
Make Sure the Animated Gif Actually Shows Up in Email
Different email clients have different processes for inserting gifs and images into emails. Learn how to attach a gif to an email by visiting the “Help” or “Info” section of your particular email client.
If you simply copy and paste it into the body of the content, it’s possible it may not show up when others receive the message. Instead, you need to check with your ESP to find out how to embed the gif in email so that it appears to all recipients.
Don’t Go Overboard
Gif email marketing tactics can add a sense of fun and humor to a campaign, but that doesn’t mean they replace standard email marketing design best practices.
Your readers still want you to provide truly valuable content. Including too many memes or animated gifs in email can make it difficult for them to find the useful content, as excessive visuals are distracting. It’s usually best to limit yourself to one gif or meme per email.
Stay on Brand With Your Gif Email Marketing
Many popular gifs and memes that circulate among internet users are geared toward a particular demographic. For instance, a gif of a character from a TV show that’s popular among Millennials may not resonate with an older audience.
Make sure whenever you embed a gif in an email, the one you choose accurately reflects your brand. Additionally, make sure it corresponds to the demographics of your audience.
Keep it Short
When inserting an animated gif in an email, don’t choose one that depicts a lengthy scene. Your readers have plenty of content distracting them already. You may lose their attention if you ask them to watch a clip that’s more than a few seconds long.
If you need to, you can cut down the duration of a gif or change its size using a gif resize tool. You not only want to make sure the clip is short enough, but also that the size of the file is small enough to load quickly on mobile devices.
Make a Point
Gifs and memes are so popular because they express an emotion or thought more effectively and efficiently than words alone. For example, the popular meme of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka indicates that the accompanying text is sarcastic in nature. This is useful, as sarcasm is difficult to convey over the internet.
Don’t include these visual features simply because doing so is “hip”; use them to make a point. You should study animated gif email examples to better understand when this approach works and when it doesn’t.
Customize the Image
There’s no shortage of popular memes and gifs already available on the internet. However, instead of including an existing one in your message, it’s often smarter to simply develop your own. This may involve working with an outside party, but the investment is worthwhile. They can develop content that’s specific to your brand, and potentially teach you how to attach a gif to an email.
Inserting a meme or animated gif in email messages can make your content stand out, but remember, these features should supplement the valuable content – not distract from it. Include them when you think dynamic visuals and an interactive element in your emails can enhance the overall message.
As always, track your campaign to see how well these types of emails perform with readers. And make sure to check your email lists with our free email verification tool before sending. Monitoring the performance of your gif email marketing will help you better understand when to use these visuals, and when to leave them out.
