• by editor , David Baker , May 5, 2008

Wouldn't you love to have full animation or even video in email? We know for a fact that rich media in email works from a performance perspective. I've seen results as high as 60% improvement in bottom line results with the use of rich media. Unfortunately, in today's world of spammers, phishing and cybercrime, the ISPs have restricted our creativity to a point we struggle to even get images rendered.

This doesn't mean you can't be creative. The fact is, you have a percentage of your loyal readers, subscribers and customers that will open your email frequently and are receptive to more creative presentations. And with those customers, you can try new things to inspire the inspired. So, why not try new things?

The ISPs do restrict you from coding java script into email, so you can't do any cool things like call up a streamed video or enable Flash. Even in the B2B worlds, there are so many corporate restrictions that are part of each company's IT policies, rendering rich media becomes even more of a guesswork.

Don't give up, though. There are some easy options to help you do things outside the box.

First, you can use animated gifs. While the transition of images does not work in all environments, it works in the large percentage of the largely populated ISPs. An animated gif will allow you to create transitioning images as one image and it will rotate those images when it pulls up the HTML.

This technique has been used in some very creative ways recently in the retail space. Some use it to show variations in colors and styles of products. I saw one recently that transitioned colors onto a shoe product to show it in four colors. Some use it to animate important points (Free Shipping) and some use it to call attention to the main points of the email. I'm not sure why more people aren't using it today -- except that it requires more thinking, planning and creativity, and with time at a premium, it goes to the bottom of the priority list. While it's a great idea and can add flair to your work, you should be careful and understand that if the images don't transition, you will be left with the first image in the sequence. Meaning your creative should support a good experience with that single image, so I recommend you don't transition word phrases and place your payoff statement as the third transition.

Tests we ran with our clients have shown incremental improvement in click to response based on animated images. But I caution you to use animation in good taste. A bright yellow starburst of a sale animating or blinking marquis lights won't add value to the experience - it will cheapen your brand.

As for Flash and Video in email, they just don't work consistently enough across most IPS for my comfort. I've seen many samples, and the vendors specializing in this claim they can deliver this experience, but I have yet to see them perform consistently enough in our test environments to suggest it to our clients. That doesn't mean you can't work around this, promising the payoff of a rich experience by designing a video window with a creative prompt that links you to a landing page where the video plays or animated gifs in the player window calling the receiver to click through. It doesn't mean you can't use animated gifs to simulate a Flash sequence and prompt the user to click through for the full presentation.

The key to great creative is to comprehensively understand your customer's email experience, to keep improving on this and finding creative illustration that helps tell the story or communicate a message.