5 Design Mistakes Email Marketers Still Make

Is this better? Only marginally. "Latest sales" might make me want to download the images and see what is on sale. But this email violates another of the cardinal rules: the one that says "always use alt text for every image."

Using Irrelevant Alt Text for Images

Now this email, you notice, has alt text in each image box.

But each image has the same alt text! Which makes it pretty pointless. Come on, how difficult is it to write a few words of relevant text describing each image you are using?

Not Optimally Using the Rich "Real Estate" at the Top of the Email

Now this business does it much better than the previous ones.

However, they could use the header area, which is what you see in your preview pane or when you first open the email, much more effectively. Use an image there if you will, but also have text up that entices your recipient and encourages them to click on the email.

Relying Too Heavily on Images

I get it, I do: you need prospects to view your products, almost smell your flowers, before you can make a sale.

But look at our business: we produce advertising and marketing design. It's as visual as it gets. It would be much much easier for me to fill our newsletters with samples of our best work and leave it to wow recipients. But good marketers tell a story. Ferns and Petals does a good job up there by telling you why you should order flowers (don't you want to show your mother you care?) and giving out tantalizing hints of the products to make you want to display the images on that email.

If you don't need to show so many product images, however, it's a good idea to have your email rely more on text: so that even if someone's reading them with the images turned off, they don't miss any of the story.