Using GIFs to Make Your Emails More Engaging
They’re fun, silly, and a means to inject some life into your newsletters and email campaigns. Particularly for marketers who want to use more than just words and static images.
I’ve gathered some ideas & tips to help you best use GIFs in your campaigns, to enhance your messaging and boost your click-through rates.
(Mailchimp's content studio has to access Giphy's vast library of animated GIFS. You can insert them into your campaigns for free. It's SUPER easy, here's the guide)
1. Have a purpose for your GIF
When GIFs are used, they automatically become the star of the show and nothing in your copy is going to challenge their dominance.
2. Make your GIF and CTA work together
Every email you write should include some kind of call to action. Taking into account tip 1, it’s worth doing some planning to ensure your call to action and your GIF play well together, guiding subscribers to carry out your desired action.
3. Create a custom GIF that matches your brand
As with images or graphics of any kind, the more you can brand your GIF the better. There are ways you can create a GIF yourself:
GIPHY GIF Maker – GIPHY provides a simple interface for uploading photos or video, which you can then edit, decorate, and download a GIF.
Photoshop – Adobe has published a tutorial on how to use a series of photos and frame animation to create an animated GIF.
4. Take note of the file size
The larger an image file happens to be, the longer it will take to load. And that can cause big problems in emails, especially when we’re pretty well-conditioned to expect immediate gratification!
Mailchimp recommends keeping your image file size approximately 1MB or less, and other file types 10MB or less.
5. Don’t forget about accessibility!
When you’re embedding GIFs into your email, it’s important to remember accessibility recommendations. In this case, you’ll want to ensure you’re using alt text along with your GIF.
