An email design that looks fantastic on your screen might not look so fantastic when it is delivered to your contacts.
In fact, the 'great looking' design of your email may well be killing your response rates.
As many as 19% of email recipients will not open an email that hasn’t rendered properly, as they assume it is spam*.
How to make sure you get it right
There are two key factors that you need to understand and consider when you are working in an email creative. Both of these are features of the email software your recipients are likely to be using.
1. Image blocking
Image blocking is when an email client automatically turns the images off in the emails it delivers. This is standard in a growing number of email clients, and impacts on both B2B and B2C email senders.
When images are switched off, the user has to click to display them. This means that if you rely on images alone to communicate your campaign message or offer, then your message will have no initial impact.
Image heavy emails may also attract high spam scores in spam checkers, resulting in your emails being delivered into Junk folders.
In the example below, a single-image email is illegible in Gmail, Outlook 2003 and Windows mail.
* Source: Email Labs 2005 survey