Email marketers are always looking for ways to improve their campaigns to make them more appealing to users and by adding a degree of interactivity to their messages, they'll spark more interest and encourage subscriber interaction. Animated GIFs are a great way to add ‘motion’ to your mailings, bringing the content to life with just a few extra Kb.
Why to use GIFs to animate emails
The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) format has been around since the late 1980s and is still very much alive and well thanks to the many memes that proliferate on social media. Animations can be simple and short in length, but they are effective in adding a distinctive touch without the need to insert a video that can be too long and heavy.
The main reason for using GIF animations is the engagement that the campaigns in which they are inserted get. They capture attention, so the user focuses on the message and spends a few seconds more than if it were a static image. This makes the reading time go up in the statistics and can lead to an increase in the click-through rate, but above all it generates a positive impression on the brand by making your campaign more interesting.
There are different types of content that can be useful to animate emails, for example showing variations of a product, revealing a piece of news in an eye-catching way or explaining a concept by making it simpler. Therefore, GIFs are able to set the tone of the campaign: they can be humorous or an elegant visual reinforcement, be the main image or just a snippet, be placed in the header or on a button, and so on. The important thing is that they do not distract or add noise to the message, but support it and make it more attractive.
Fuente: Really Good Emails
Good practices for the insertion of GIFs in campaigns
We recommend that you take into account some issues when you are going to use them:
- Take care of accessibility. Always remember that many email readers block images, so the comprehension of your campaign should not depend on them or on an animated GIF. Add an appealing alternative text to your images to get the user to enable them.
- Choose the first frame well. Pay special attention because some mail readers, such as most versions of Outlook, do not support animated GIFs, but display the first frame of them. In comparison, mail managers treat videos similarly because most of them are not supported.
- Keep an eye on size. Although GIF files are usually faster than videos, be careful with the overall weight, especially for mobile devices. Adding interactivity is all well and good, but we must remember that the user experience will be diminished if we make them wait too long to download the images.
- Add value. Any element that you add to the design of your email has to be studied and thought to improve your way of communicating and get better results. Before adding any element, think about whether it really adds value to your message or if it is just there ‘because it is fashionable’, as happens with some memes.
- Do it in 3D. You can include 3D GIFs in your email marketing campaigns, a resource that will multiply the impact of your campaigns. These are two-dimensional animations modified in such a way that a very realistic and eye-catching 3D depth and effect is achieved.
- Create your own GIFs. You can download the files from sites such as Giphy or Tenor, for example to add them to informative newsletters. However, for promotional campaigns, it is more interesting if you create them on your own with a professional design programme because this way you can bring your products to life.
Fuente: Really Good Emails
If you hesitate between using an image, an animated GIF or a video, you can create an A/B test and experiment a bit with the formats to see which one works best for you.
