Small businesses respect and value their mailing lists, as they realise that it is a free, direct marketing communication tool with their most engaged customers.

Many business owners have commited to regular emails and work hard to make them engaging and ‘clickable’. Most owners I speak to tell me they send emails generally once per month. They will send a second email if there is major news, such as a new product launch, an event, or a special occasion such as Valentine’s Day.

For some of the big businesses (I’m looking at you Asos, Net-a-porter, Dan Murphys) the frequency of their emails can be daily.

As consumers, this means that our inboxs can become overwhelming and full of emails trying to catch our attention.

Marketers are always looking at ways we can make the message more eye-catching and stand out from the crowd.

A method that consistantly ranks as a key component in email open rates is animated images (GIF’s).

This is where you build an ‘image’ from multiple still images and the result looks like it’s moving. Similar to original animation!

It can be used to make something stand out such as the example below:

Or it can be used to showcase multiple products at once, such as this example:

But mainly, it is used to help your message stand out, catch the eye of your subscriber, and possibly even to entertain them.

The catch. There is one email provider that does not play nicely with GIF’s in emails. Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013 will not ‘play’ the GIF and instead shows the first frame only. There are two points that are important to make here.

1./ The number of Outlook users on your subscriber list may not be that large. If you are using one of the big email marketing platforms such as MailChimp or Campaign Monitor, you will be able to review some of your previously mailed campaigns and see the number of Outlook users there were. Typically, it is one of the lowest used services for customers that are signing up to subscriber lists. If you think about your own habits, you are likely to sign up to that event program mailing list using your personal home email address (gmail, hotmail etc) than to use your work email.

2./ To ensure you are still providing your Outlook customers with useful information, make sure that the first frame of your GIF works as a stand alone image. A customer should still be able to make sense of the email and take action based on only seeing frame 1. Example of this below:

So, if you are putting time and energy into your email marketing, and you want to change it up a bit, why not look at making your emails dance!

If you would like to discuss an email marketing strategy specifically for you and your business, or you would like me to manage your regular emails, please get in touch.

Oh, and be sure to sign up to my own email list! Once a month I send out lots of business admin and marketing tips, a round up of events happening around the Goulburn Valley in the next month and opportunities for workshops and networking. (And of course, I will make dancing bits.)

Have a great week,

-Alana

Dancing emails.

Should I be paying for a website developer?