Return On Subscriber – Email Marketing Blog

I have been a loyal Gmail user for along time. Lately though I have been frustrated with Gmail, mainly due to the images in my HTML emails not displaying correctly. Well they have announced some changes that shed some light on the image issue.

From the Gmail Blog:

Now displaying images in messages from your contacts
Monday, July 20, 2009 5:58 PM
Posted by David de Kloet, Software Engineer

When an email references external images, Gmail usually doesn’t display them automatically. Instead we show placeholders and present you with the option to “Display images below” or “Always display images from” that sender.

We do this to help protect your privacy from spammers, who can use images and links to verify that your email address is real.

But often the messages you get with images are from friends or family and there’s no reason to worry about your privacy — you just want to see the photo of your newborn niece or the invitation design they’re sending you. So, in these cases, we’ve decided to start displaying images by default. Now, whenever someone you’ve emailed at least twice sends you a message containing images, you’ll see them right away. Note that we picked this threshold of two messages to start with, but we may tweak it if it doesn’t seem right going forward. And we only display images by default for authenticated messages (using SPF or DKIM). Gmail and other big mail providers usually authenticate their mail, but other services might not, so it’s possible you’ll get an email from one of your contacts where images aren’t displayed by default.

If you prefer to go back to the way things were, you can choose not to display images from certain senders or from anyone. To disable images from an individual sender, click “Don’t display from now on” under the “Show details” link of an email from them with images. To disable images from everybody, select “Ask before displaying external content” under “External content” on the general Settings tab.

What does this mean to Email Marketers?

Gmail will display images by defualt for emails from addresses that are in that person’s Contact’ list. It will also display images if you have sent that address at least 2 emails and that the address in question is authenticating using SPF or DKIM.

What Can I Do in My Email Marketing Program?

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The Online Marketing Summit (#OMS) is a education based event focused on best practices in online marketing including Email Marketing, Integrated Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Search Engine Marketing (SEO & PPC), Web Analytics, & Usability. They have a running policy of no tradeshow booths or vendor pitches disguised as education, which gives the event a unqiue place in the marketing world.

I have had the great pleasure of speaking at this event this summer and will be giving 2 more presentations in Portland on June 29th and Seattle on July 1st. The topic I will be covering is “Designing Your Email Program From Online Outreach to the Welcome Message”, where we take a look at the entire process from opt-in to the first few emails to  a new subscriber.  I have a lot of fun with this topic and I love crowd participation.  I hope to see you there!

More info on the Online Marketing Summit >>