Optimizing Emails With the Right Text-to-Image Ratio
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to get repeat customers and turn one-time visitors into purchasers. Including images in your emails will make them more engaging and can help you increase your click-through and conversion rates. However, how many images should you include, and how big should they be?
The Problem With Too Much Text
On the one hand, including too much text can make your emails boring. People often check their emails when they are in a hurry. In fact, 61.9% of email opens happen on mobile devices, including phones and tablets, and almost a third of email users read their emails on mobile.
When people see large blocks of text, especially on mobile, they’re likely to delete the email right away. They may also press the back button, planning on opening the email again later but never getting around to doing so.
Text isn’t as engaging as images. We humans are very visual creatures, and we have evolved to rely on visual cues. Reading large blocks of text can seem like a chore, so it’s critical to use photos to get your message across.
The Problem With Too Many Images
On the other hand, if you include too many images, you run the risk of not getting essential data across to readers. Not everything can be conveyed in a photo.
If your email has too many images, it may take a long time to load. Some images may not work well on certain screen sizes, leading to a poor user experience.
Furthermore, some people turn email images off. Typically, they are people with slow internet connections. However, the fact remains that not everyone will see your images.
As you can see, both images and text are important. The question remains: What is the right text-to-image ratio for email marketing? How many images are too much, and how many are not enough?
1. Utilize the 60/40 Rule
The 60/40 ratio is used in many aspects of life. For example, the golden rule of investing has traditionally been to put 60% of your investment in stocks and 40% in bonds. In email marketing, the golden rule is to use 60% text and 40% images.
The reasoning for the rule is that text is still more important than images. Images supplement the text, but you need the text to get your main message across.
Of course, this rule is not set in stone. If some of your emails have a 65/35 or 55/45 ratio, that’s still okay. It’s simply a general guideline to follow.
2. Use Common Sense to Find the Proper Balance
It’s essential not to get caught up with a mathematical ratio. It’s virtually impossible to stick to it 100% of the time, nor is it advisable to do so. Some situations will require more images, while others will require more text.
Use your common sense! You’re smart enough to figure out when there are too many images in an email. Send yourself a test email and put yourself in the shoes of the average subscriber.
Are the pictures in the email making it difficult to read essential text? If you had no idea what the email was about, would you get overwhelmed and confused by looking at it? If it has too many pictures, you might.
It’s not just about the text-to-image ratio but also about where you put your images, how big they are, and how much text and white space is in between them. Putting all your images one after the other at the top of your email and all the text at the bottom doesn’t make a lot of sense. People will get tired of scrolling through the images and never see the content you wrote.
As an example, your email could look like this:
A header image taking up 10% of the email
Text taking up 30% of the email
Another image taking up 15% of the email
More text content taking up 20% of the email
An image with a call-to-action button taking up 15% of the email
A closing text taking up 10% of the email, asking readers to share or respond with feedback
In that example, you maintain the 60/40 ratio while using images to strategically break up your text content and make the email easier to skim through.
The length of the email matters as well. If it’s a short email, one may be enough. If it’s a very long email, consider utilizing more photos to break up the monotony of the text.
3. Make Sure Your Message Makes Sense Even When Images Don’t Load
As I already mentioned, not everyone will have their images load automatically. By default, all images on Gmail will show up, but some users will turn them off. Other users will be using the HTML view of Gmail, in which emails won’t load. Some browsers may also block images from appearing.
If you rely on your images to tell the whole story, you’re going to run into a bit of a problem if some of your customers don’t see those images.
Even if it’s a small percentage of your subscribers (and it’s hard to know the exact percentage), you’re missing out on potential conversions and sales. The sales you are missing out on may be just what you need to go from breaking even to making a profit.
As such, you need to ensure your message makes sense even when images don’t load. Images are excellent for enhancing your message, making an email more eye-catching, increasing click-through rates with stylish calls-to-action, and a lot more.
At the same time, ensure that people who can’t see images are not missing out. Include a hyperlinked call-to-action instead of only relying on an image-based one, for example. If you are emailing your subscribers about a promotion, don’t just include a single image announcing the details of the discount or sale – write a short snippet about it too.
4. Use Alt Texts
Alt text is short for alternative text. It’s what shows up when images don’t load. Using alt text is not a substitute for what we talked about in the previous section. You still need to make sure the main body of your email makes sense, even without the alt text.
However, alt text can give readers a gist of what an image is about even if it doesn’t load. Without alt text, readers will see an image is there, but they won’t get any more information.
Email service providers like Mailchimp and Constant Contact make it easy to add alt text to images. However, like figuring out the ideal text-to-image ratio, adding alt text is an art in its own right.
A good rule of thumb is to take the most important text from an image and use it in the alt text. For example, if you have a banner that says something like, “Use PROMO10 for 10% Off,” add that to your alt text. If the image doesn’t contain any text, include a short description of it.
Don’t make your alt text too long, or it may distract from the rest of your message. Furthermore, don’t repeat the same alt text in all of your images. This isn’t a blog post; alt text in emails does not affect SEO and doesn’t need to include specific keywords. Don’t include quotation marks in your alt text, as it can mess up the HTML code that alt text requires.
It’s critical not to get confused between the alt text and the image caption. If you write captions for your images, they will typically show up at the bottom of the image, in a smaller font than the rest of your email. While your image might not load, the caption will still show up – the alt text is in addition to the caption.
5. Try Different Ratios and Adjust When Necessary
Finally, test out different ratios to see what works best. The reality is that the best ratio can vary based on your niche and target audience demographics.
One way to test different ratios is to segment your list and use A/B split testing. In other words, send similar emails – but with different text-to-image ratios – to different segments of your list. Then, track your click-through and conversion rates to see which ratio consistently brings the best results.
Do that for several emails, across different email types, including newsletters, promotional emails, and even transactional emails (like purchase confirmations). Doing it just once isn’t enough to truly understand which ratio works best.
Final Thoughts
It can take a while to figure out the best text-to-image ratio. Start by using the 60/40 rule, but maintain an open mind. Try out different ratios to see which one works best.
If you find a ratio that brings more click-throughs and sales than the 60/40 ratio, use that instead. When you do include images, make sure the message is not dependent on them so that readers can understand your message even when pictures don’t load.
Guest Post Written By: Andrew Scherer
