Email is one of the most powerful tools in any marketer's toolbox. It can be used to augment anything from email newsletters, social media promotions and announcements, and even your website. When you send an email that includes a call-to-action (CTA) button or an image, it's important to include alt text so email recipients know what they will find when they click on that link. Great Sales Emails use Alt Text - Period!
The issue is alt text and I’m taking a stand. Lack of alt text is a wasted opportunity and I simply do not understand why it happens.
Do you see a problem with this email screenshot?
This is the screenshot of an email from a big craft store brand, and it lacks alt text, as in it has no alt text. This email was not an anomaly. I’ve received several emails from this brand and each was as blank as this one.
What a missed opportunity, not to mention blatant disregard for common sense email coding best practices.
On the other hand, this email from my favorite seed company showed up the same day:
This email included alt text as well as actual text, so I could scroll through and know the content even without the images. And…this is a much smaller company compared to the craft store one, but the smaller brand adhered to the email copywriting and marketing best practices…which leads to great sales emails.
Email 1: The craft brand email: Engagement level = zero. There was nothing to entice me to open it, as you can see.
Email 2: The seed store email: Engagement level = high. Even though this email was promoting flower bulbs and I didn’t see the pictures of the beautiful flowers, I could see enough text to get me interested. I clicked through to the website to start shopping.
Why does this matter? Because the best email copywriting in the world is useless if no one sees it.
Now you might think the crafting brand knows most of their target audience uses an iPhone and therefore sees the images by default. I originally saw the emails I’m describing on my laptop using Outlook. By default, images are blocked and I saw nothing. When I looked later on my iPhone, the images showed up. I had a very different experience with the email from the crafting brand.
But here’s the deal: You’re better off designing your email for everyone, not just the majority. And there’s no reason not to! If most people use an iPhone, but not all people, then design for more than the iPhone audience or lose out on those subscribers using desktops or laptops.
Designing emails to render well with images turned off may not be top of mind, but it shows that you as the brand owner of email know the audience well.
So why wouldn’t that same email marketer want to make sure their emails rendered well no matter the device, and no matter the settings? Because people like me still use computers to view their emails. COMMENT: This boils down to people looking at email across all different types of devices in many scenarios.
The seed company did it right. They used a mix of email copywriting and alt text to make sure their email communicated even without the images. They are making an effort to create great sales emails. The big crafting brand? They have an optimization opportunity that should not be ignored.
Don’t be "that person". Use alt text.