Our digital culture has put visual communication front and centre of corporate communications. Consider the popularity of YouTube, SlideShare and Facebook and their role as powerful corporate promotional tools.
Who knows, perhaps it’s because humans have evolved to scan for game on the horizon, that we register movement so readily.
Who can doubt that the moving image informs us more quickly and more effectively that static text?
In fact, recently neuroscientists at MIT have found that the brain can identify images even if they are seen for as little as 13 milliseconds!
Wow that’s pretty fast. Now consider the humble but ubiquitous email. Most of us use it every day yet it seems to be stuck in a sort of old-tech time warp with emails simply acting as a digitised letter.
This static form of corporate communications is starting to change with the rising popularity of animation-in-email.
In fact, moving images or GIFs (Graphic Interchange Format) are being used to great effect in corporate emails to highlight and engage stakeholders. Animated GIFs are a type of file form that combines a series of static images in a way that appears to viewers as an animation.
Like any moving image, GIFs attract attention and can be used to highlight a specific promotion. They can carry a lot of information and can showcase multiple products.
Animated Benefits
When used with thought, animated GIFs in emails can really make an impact on your target audience.
GIFs can convey a lot of corporate information quickly and effectively. Like videos, they can make the complex simpler but they also have the potential to highlight certain content so that it “jumps off the page” and draws attention to a call to action.
Corporate marketers may initially shy away from anything to do with “animation” due to being burnt by the large Flash files of the past.
The beauty of GIFs is that they are much smaller files and won’t burden the recipient’s system.
Here’s how you can you apply them to your organisation’s emails to really engage stakeholders and keep your customers clicking.
If you want to enliven your corporate communications there are a few things to watch out for to make sure it’s done right for your corporate needs.
Tips & Tactics
1. Don’t over-do it
Avoid the temptation to overdo it! Remember those early websites that were crammed chock full of information and required paracetamol to be digested? You don’t want to become so enamoured with the tools that it swamps the message. Challenge their place on the page before sending the email. Good corporate communication rules still apply!
2. KISS and get on with it
The KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle should underpin the use of GIFs. Related to the point above, you should keep emails concise and targeted. The use of some animated pretty pictures should not alter that fact. And don’t forget your call to action!
3. Think light & mobile
Remember that more and more emails are being opened on mobile devices. This means you have to avoid burdening the mobile user with large files. You want to enhance the message not stomp on it with a file size that is larger than say 40KB. Emails are best created using HTML to keep the size of the file lean. As GIFs can become large files simpler graphics should be used to limit the size of the email.
4. Test before you send
Like a final proof-read, always test the animated email before sending it out. Just like testing an eDM you should always check the animated emailed to ensure it works well both on mobile and desktop.
In short, GIF-driven emails can be a great way to enliven corporate communications, if done right. Perhaps it’s time you brought your email communications to life?
Fatpublisher provides email marketing design services to our clients. If you are interested in finding out about our web design services, please contact us.
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