
If in doubt, include a static image which tells the story of your animated content. To make up for this, we recommend that you produce your file so that the first frame contains the most important information and is seen straight away without a need for animation. Compatibility issues can cause only the first frame of the GIF to display which can render them effectively unfit-for-purpose as an eye-catching element to your campaigns, and users have to set the GIF to repeat which gives a poor user experience. Microsoft Outlook uses Word to render HTML email, so GIFs and animated content don’t always display well. Don’t fall down at the last deliverability hurdle! Common mistakes They need to be as relevant as any other image included in your campaign.Īnother top tip is to avoid using JavaScript – most email clients block it as a security precaution and this creates an automatic barrier to stop your message reaching its intended recipient. They’re cute, but unless you’re selling kitty litter or catnip it’s not worth including a GIF just for the sake of it. We’d suggest staying away from cat GIFs though.
#Add a gif to outlook 360email software#
If you can’t find the GIF you want, it’s also ridiculously easy to create one yourself and there are plenty of free software programs out there that will help you put one together. Fortunately, email clients are more likely to support GIF than video, so you shouldn’t find this too much of a hurdle. That way, you’ll pick up on any discrepancies and be able to tweak the campaign before it goes out. Remember that animated GIFs and Flash are not guaranteed to work in all email clients, so run a test to see how the email will appear in different inboxes.
#Add a gif to outlook 360email how to#
Still not convinced about how valuable GIFs could be? What if we told you that video email marketing has a 280% return on investment in comparison to dreary old plain-text? GIF emails have a slightly lower ROI but it’s still an improvement! Now, have we sold you on the GIF idea? Good! Next you need to know how to incorporate them into your email campaign. GIFs in all their low-picture quality glory have managed to retain a certain air of nostalgia, so far from turning customers off, they’re actually a useful way to tap into your target market’s psyche. You can see then, how a GIF could be a valuable addition to an email campaign, allowing you to add animation without clogging up your customer’s inboxes (trust us, large file formats which are slow to load are an easy way to lose subscribers). Video size is larger, GIF size is smaller. Some formats of video have high resolution and high picture quality, but the GIF has just 256 colours available.ģ. So how can we bring back the Eighties into our modern email campaigns but leave the spandex and bad perms firmly in the past? The difference between Gifs and VideoĪlthough the GIF file is a video feature, there are some key differences you need to know.ġ. The GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a 1980’s creation that has stood the test of time and remained a popular method of adding motion and animation to an email, helping campaigns to stand out from the crowd.
