Optimize Your Email for Images Off: Alt Tags
Have you considered what your email looks like when it arrives in a Gmail account with Images turned Off? Or when images are blocked in Hotmail? Did you know that the default view in Gmail is to have Images turned off—even if your email address is added to the customer’s address book? Sure, recipients can turn the Images On, but what if they don’t? Make sure that your emails look good whether images are on or off by using Alt Tags.
When you mouse over an image text pops up for the image: this is an alt tag. And when images are turned off, the alt tag appears as text in place of the image. It’s basically a text description of your image. But using alt tags effectively means reinforcing the image’s purpose or message, not merely describing what the image looks like. For example, the company logo that appears in an email could have an alt tag of “MustangList logo.” But the more effective alt tag would be “MustangList—Easy and Cost Effective Email List Management.” When the images are off, this reinforces the company sending the email, and it reads well to the subscriber—it doesn’t look like some weird back-end of things meant for the designers.
Because it’s this text description that displays when images are turned off, you can use the alt tag to reinforce the message or the call to action of the image. Say you have an email promoting a big Memorial Day sale, and the email is comprised mainly of graphic banners. In the banners you convey the details of the sale (where, when, what, why). You could have alt tags that say “MemDay Sale image1,” “MemDay Sale image2,” etc. Or you could choose some of the more important images and use alt tags to describe the details of the sale: “Huge Memorial Day Sale: Save 20% on all items with this promo code: memday08.” You can choose just one image’s alt tag in which to convey this information, or choose a few images and separate the information among different alt tags.
Be sure to consider the placement of the text when the images are turned off: if you provide alt tags for every image in the email, the text could be redundant and difficult to read. Based on the location of the images within the email, carefully choose which images you will leave blank and which images have the best placement for displaying and reading the alt tag text when the images are turned off. And if the images are more ornamental and don’t convey important information, then leave the alt tag blank— there’s no reason to make an alt tag that’s purely descriptive (“girl reading a book”). In this case you’ll have adequate text copy in the email to get your point across and it will be safe to leave the alt tag blank.
By making sure the alt tags are very descriptive and contain all the information communicated in the images, you can ensure the message of your email comes across even with images off.