Images in HTML email: time for change?

What about dynamic images?

The images displayed in an email are retrieved by the viewing software (email client or webmail interface) from an online source (your server or your ESP's system). The email just contains the URL of the image file.

So there's nothing to stop you changing the image served at the URL at any point after an email campaign goes out.

Why on earth would you want to do that? Here two examples...

1. Sold out notices

Linda Bustos and Chad White reveal how Tiger Direct replace a product image in a promotional email with a "sold out" image if that product is no longer available.

Both agree it teaches people to open and respond quicker to Tiger Direct's mails.

[As an aside, you might prefer people to click on sold-out items if, for example, they can then sign-up for an email alert telling them when the item is in stock again.]

2. Image optimization

If you send out different email versions, each with a different image, you might notice that one particular image drives more response than the alternatives.

You can then change the image source files to the "winning" image for those emails that haven't gone out yet (and/or those already delivered).

At least one service already offers this kind of real-time image optimization.

Other ideas...

Let's throw out more ways we might use dynamic image updates. How about...

updating an image with the number of items left in stock to induce a sense of urgency?
updating offers with the very latest customer reviews?
automatically converting your stream of Tweets or blog post headlines to an image so that every email you send always contains your latest information, regardless of when people read it?
if someone downloads the white paper or buys the product on offer, can the associated email image update to a "thank you for downloading" or "thanks for purchasing" message? Or change to a cross- or upsell offer?
might sidebar images change according to the click behavior of the recipient? If the subscriber spent time browsing engagement rings, could the sidebar images in your past emails automatically switch to appropriate offers? If they just bought a digital camera, could they see a sidebar advertising batteries and camera bags next time they looked at an old email from you?

Intrigued? And I'm sure with a little thought you can come up with some more ideas.

There are, however, four caveats:

First, both image blocking and image caching might prevent the old and/or modified images from displaying.

Second, some of the targeted images might cross privacy boundaries or come across as too "big brother."

Third, none of these ideas are widespread or proven. I'm not even sure some have ever been tried. So test.

Four, you or your email marketing service/software provider may have to do some serious IT development work to get these things going.

Any other suggestions for new things we might do with images?

Update: Here's another idea: images personalized with the recipient's name. See this 2007 (!) post or click on the OTTO email on this page to see an example in an Easter greeting. (Found via absolit.)

Permalink | April 21, 2009 | 5 comment(s)
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5 Comments:

Very creative post. Love this idea. Thanks for sharing.
By Brett, on 21 April, 2009

nice post (and thanks for the link.. just wondered, why i got so much traffic suddenly ;) ).

note:
i've written another post some days ago concerning the use of dynamic images:

http://emailmarketingtipps.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/dynamisch-erzeugte-bilder-fuer-echtzeit-personalisierung-mit-datum-uhrzeit-ort/in the example i do..

1.) address the email-recipient with "Dear firstname, online on DD.MM.YYYY at HH:MM o'clock...!" and - more interesting IMHO -
2.) use the IP-address for realtime personalization with the city/area, where the reader is most likely located ("dear firstname in the area of [city]").. although this of course bears many problems, it's still worth mentioning :)

the example includes the little php-code fyi..

ciao,
rené
By Anonymous, on 22 April, 2009

Thanks Brett, also for the kind sendlabs tweet.

Hi René (Blogger may play havoc with the last character in your name): always good to hear from Germany.
By Mark Brownlow, on 22 April, 2009

I was recently asked about the viability of having so called "butterfly email", which could be forwarded with one "set" of imagery, undertake overnight metamorphosis, appearing completely different for the next recipient(s) in the chain.

Although the discussion centered around 'social effect' rather than marketing, it soon turned to the possible abuses of one thing that is truly important in marketing; trust. In this theoretical scenario, the trust relationship between two individuals rather than that between customer and brand would be leveraged to push an agenda (whatever that may be.)

As both software clients and web based services increase CSS compatibility, and the growth in image "personalization" APIs, we could see email that is practically self aware

Time to do some testing
By Anonymous, on 05 May, 2009

Interesting! I can see the abuse angle. But also the creative marketing angle.

The only real limit is perhaps our imagination.
By Mark Brownlow, on 05 May, 2009

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