Animated GIFs in Your Email Marketing

Email marketers are always working to improve their email marketing - finding new ways to surprise and engage their subscribers. One of these wow-effects is gif-animation.

How to add animation to your email?

You don't need any special knowledge and skills for this - just like an ordinary picture. This is how it will look in the editor.It will be much more difficult to choose, create and decide, but why do you need a GIF in a letter and is it worth bothering?

Features of using gif-animation in mailing lists

Remember weight. The animation will only play after it has fully loaded. For this, it must be light. If for ordinary pictures the allowable size is 2 MB, then for gif - 125 -800 kb.Make the first frame the most informative. Some operating systems and mailers do not show animation, but stop at the first screen.Do not be full of animations. Stick to the rule: one scroll - one animation. There are exceptions when it looks good, but you need to try:

Animation quality. Any picture in poor quality is unlikely to induce a purchase; rather, it will evoke the opposite emotions.

Timers. It is better not to make gif counters - it’s not very pleasant when there are two hours before the end of the action, even if you go to the letter in a week. Use services like motionmail, which count in real time and at the end of the specified period the timer is reset.

You can also animate text. Again, don't overdo it.

Semantic load. Still, adding something blinking just to make it blink is not very stylish. Your animation should have a semantic load and so that this image does not get out of context.

There is no need to make the animation too complicated and too long. First, it can affect the quality of the animation. Secondly, if this is some kind of instruction, it may seem that it is too difficult to follow.

Give preference not to GIFs created from different pictures, but to one animation linked into one story. If you need to use several pictures that are loosely connected to each other, add smooth transitions to create the effect of movement.

Why use gifs in emails?

If you've noticed, more and more brands are now adding animation to emails. Don't assume that after adding a gif to your email campaigns, your sales, clicks, or email openings will skyrocket. This is gaining popularity due to the fact that this way you can draw more attention to your product / service. Three principles of animation:

# 1 Entertainment

Include in the game

The right animated picture will help induce the passive reader to take action. For example, you can play something famous that will impress the majority of your subscribers.

# 2 Training

Instead of a thousand words, it's better to show how something works visually. To make the animation feel easy, try to fit it in 10-20 seconds. Alternatively, you can split the instruction into small steps.

Other instructions can be illustrated in the same way:

- Using a promo code

- Checkout in cart

- Technical characteristics of a product

- How to install the app

- Features of using a service or website, etc.

# 3 Engagement

This is the best way to ignite the desire of the reader to use your services, order a product.

Replace long descriptions

What worries every girl? Of course her beauty. Avon played on this in the letter. It would be boring to just write: download the application and see how you can easily choose your make-up, but to show in a letter how different images change in a second is much cooler.

Additional emphasis on one element

Remember that too much animation in one screen is not good? But to draw more attention to one of the elements, a small animation will do just fine. It is also a common practice to highlight the block with shares in the letter header.

Where can I get animation?

If you go to a designer, then he will certainly do everything in the best possible way. If you want to do it yourself, there are several sites that will simplify your task.

Giphy.com

Many ready-made GIFs, divided into categories. You can also:

- upload your video and get a gif from it

- create animated slideshow

- make a picture with animated text

- edit an existing gif

- install an add-on to Google Chrome so that gifs are always at hand

- download the app and record gifs from the screen

Gifs.com

The quality of the finished GIFs is not always perfect, but you can create your own GIFs, and effects on them, stickers, etc.

iLoveIMG

Helps to compress animation almost in half without much loss of quality.