We all know the saying about a picture being worth a thousand words, or, if you were Confucius, a thousand pieces of gold, but that doesn’t mean it is correct. Try an experiment at home.
Turn on a commercial TV channel and when the adverts come on, mute the sound. For the next commercial break, close your eyes and then ask yourself which made more sense. On the assumption that you didn’t leave the sound off it would probably have been the latter.
The use of images in direct email marketing is not without its problems. Many email service providers block images so you might think that it is not worth all the aggravation. Why not go for text only from the start?
Any quality company supplying email marketing software will provide some form of email template with the facility of including pictures so there must be some reason for their inclusion. Most would want their logo prominently displayed if only to reassure the reader that it is worth them continuing. But what others to use?
For some products the image almost chooses itself. If you are selling chocolate then there can be little harm in including a picture of it drizzling over a profiterole. It would grab anyone’s attention. If your offer of a Caribbean holiday has no sunset over water then you might be missing a trick.
The prime function of the image is to encourage the reader to read on. It is the shop window. People see something that looks good and they want to know more. Whilst the general rule is that all else should be sacrificed to that end, there are one or two exceptions.
The main one is that the picture must have some relevance to the offer. A picture of the Northern Lights might be extremely pretty but not for a tour of the pyramids. The image will make the reader want to know more about what it displays and you will irritate them if you fail to do so. So play fair with them.