Pictures are worth a thousand words-especially in emails where space is at a premium. As email marketers, the top priorities are to get the message into the subscriber's inbox, ensure everything renders properly, and provide a compelling call to action. Images are key to obtaining each of these objectives. So what do email marketers need to keep in mind when creating and using images?

Remember Goldilocks and the Three Bears? The plot of the story is a great guide when it comes to email images. Don't include too many, nor too few, and test to discover just the right amount.

As a general rule, you should include a few images in your email to provide a professional and branded look. Use images for logos and headers, and include bold pictures that inspire and drive action. But limit to a few, since having too many could get the email flagged as spam by email providers.

Also, images need to be not too big, nor too small. With over half of all email opened on a mobile device, remember to size the images in email to render on both the traditional desktop and well as all different types of mobile devices. Also, test the image file's size, ensuring that your content is of high enough quality to look good on retina displays, but is not so big that it slows down the loading of the email message.

Tips for Email Images

So what if the three bears keep your image from showing when an email is opened? Well, Goldilocks has a solution for this. Create "alt tags" for your images so the title of the picture will show in the email, even if the image does not. Another best practice is to make sure you have the entire image url, including the domain, so the subscriber can click through even if the image does not render.

Lastly, there are a couple of things to avoid. It is preferable to not have images with a lot of text, because if the image does not render the reader does not see the text. In addition, the call to action should be a stand alone button and not included in an image, as again it might not render when images are not shown.

Let's take a look at how Goldilocks adds images to her emails using Salesforce Marketing Cloud Content Builder. First, she adds images from her desktop.

After Goldilocks has uploaded her image, she can adjust its size and add in Alt Text to make sure the subscriber knows what the image contains, even if it doesn't render. Also, she can add a border, a link, and really have fun customizing the creative to ensure sure that her message will get across.

Of course, before hitting send, she does one last check to see how the picture will look on a mobile device.

Goldilocks has finished with this image for her email. She will add a few more content blocks and be ready to send her email to all of her subscribers. And send happily ever after….

The End? Not quite. We have lot's more email marketing tips for you. Check out 4 Email Practices of Marketing Masters for more insights into how to drive engagement with email.