The Dangers of Image-only Emails

Using design tools like Canva can be really useful to plan your layout and create images for beautiful emails, but don’t be tempted to export this as one big image and just insert into your email.  A well-designed email will have a balanced combination of native text and images.

• 📱 Image-only emails can be difficult to read on mobile devices. They don’t change their layout for people reading emails on their phones like a well-designed responsive email template will.
• ❌ Email clients may automatically block images from loading! If your entire email is an image, there may not be enough to entice the reader to either click a link (what link?!) or download the images.
• 👁️You’re not being inclusive! Text in images can’t be read by screen readers used by people with vision impairment. You can (and always should!) include a short “Alt Text” to describe an image, but you can’t jam a whole email’s worth of text into Alt Text.
• 🔗 You can’t add multiple links – each image can only link to a single URL
• 🤖 Image-only emails have a higher chance of being marked as spam by email clients

• ✅ Include minimal text in your email images.
• ✅ Ensure image text is readable and looks good on both desktop and mobile.
• ✅ Always include Alt Text when you add images into your email platform.  This should be short and describe the image to someone who can not see.
• ✅ Have an email template with standard image sizes so its easy for you to export those beautiful images from Canva or other design tools.
• ✅ Create an email template in Canva that mirrors your email platform template so that you can mock up the layouts before you transfer the content over. Alternatively, you can use a tool like Figma (my current favourite) or a Word/Google Doc.

If you need help developing your email process and strategy, get in touch with me for an Email Coaching and Strategy Session. Book your free consultation