Text to Image ratios in email

One of the questions I get from folks about delivery is what the optimal text to image ratio there should be in an email. I’ll be honest, I hate this question. Why? Because the question is actually irrelevant. I’ve seen companies with a single image and no text get to the inbox. I’ve seen companies with no images get to the inbox. The text to image ratio is not going to make or break delivery.
Sending mail that the user expects and wants is the crucial part of delivery. If the user wants a single image? That’s the right ratio. If the user wants a readable message with images turned off? That’s the right ratio. Fretting about 20/80 or 18.5/81.5 or 43.256666/56.743334 is getting buried in details and missing the bigger picture.

Emails should be readable. These days, being readable on mobile is critical. This is the single best argument I can think of against one-image emails. And there are still folks who read email with images off by default. Being one of them, I think it gives me insight other delivery folks lack. If I am engaged with a brand, how do I show it outside of loading images? What kinds of things let the brand know I’m still a happy recipient?
If anyone tells you that your delivery problems are the result of a bad text to image ratio, run away. There is zero chance that’s actually true. Filters aren’t going to just look at the ratio and block ratios that fall into a certain range.
What filters are going to do is take the text to image ratio as part of the fingerprint of an email stream. They’re going to recognize certain factors about emails that users like, and factors about emails that users don’t like. Some of these factors will be things like the text to image ratio. But the “wrong” ratio isn’t why mail is being filtered. Mail is being filtered because the recipients aren’t interacting with it enough and the ratio is just one part of the way the ISP identifies it.
Stop fretting over your exact text to image ratios. The right, or wrong, ratio isn’t a true factor in delivery. Instead, focus on creating an email stream that users want, expect, and engage with. This starts with address collection, but collecting accurate addresses isn’t enough. You also need to provide value to them.
Sending mail users want is the key to reach the inbox. Doing that takes time and investment by the sender.

… and bad acquisition practices
ESPC meeting

Related Posts

End of an era

A few moments ago, I cancelled one of my email addresses. This is an address that has been mine since somewhere around 1993 or 4. It was old enough to vote. And now it’s no more.
I am not even sure why I kept it for so long. It was my dialup account back when I was in grad school in Delaware. When I moved to Madison to work at the university, I kept it as a shell account and email address. I gave it up as my primary email address about the time it was bought by a giant networking company. By then I had my own domain and a mail server living behind the futon in the living room. That was back when we started WttW, somewhere around 2002.
15 years the address has mostly laid dormant. I used it for a couple yahoo groups accounts, but just lists that I lurked on.
I did use it as research for some past clients, typically the ones using affiliate marketers. “Our affiliates only ever send opt in mail!” Yeah, no. See, look, your affiliate is spamming me. My favorite was when said customer put me on the phone with the affiliate.

Read More

Gmail speaks on image caching

Gmail released a blog post last week discussing their new image caching and why they implemented it. The short version is this is a way to improve the gmail user experience by screening images for malicious activity and serving the images faster from the Google caching machines.

Read More

Verizon changes but no time line

Yesterday there was a lot of talk about Verizon moving out of email and transitioning all their customers over to the AOL backend.  The source was a page in the Verizon help center about transitioning an email address. There is no date on the page, so it’s unclear when this is going to happen or when it started.
I posted about Verizon beginning this transition back in May of 2016: Changes coming to Verizon email. The wording on the AOL page I link to is very similar to the wording on the page that was passed around yesterday.
Without a date it’s hard to really provide any advice, other than to maintain your list hygiene (you do have list hygiene programs, right?) and remove addresses that hard bounce. Quite honestly, I don’t think this will really have any effect on delivery. It doesn’t appear these changes are happening all at once, and Verizon customers have the option to keep their verizon.net address. They’re just going to have to access it differently.
For companies that use an email address as a primary key for logins or accounts, it’s probably a good time to contact customers with a verizon.net address and ask them to update their address. That’s a good idea most of the time, but when we know changes are happening at a domain level, it’s a requirement.

Read More