Why should my message not be made up of a single large image?

Many people who are new to e-mailing are attracted to making their message in the form of a single large image containing both graphic elements and text. It is indeed the easiest solution, an image creation software offering much more graphic freedom than an HTML message editor.

However, we do not recommend this approach for several reasons, which we will explain below.

 

The risk of being classified as spam

The first problem you will encounter with the use of a single large image as a message: antispams.

As a reminder, these are the tools that protect your recipients' mailboxes. There is not just one antispam, there are thousands of different ones, but many of them include a test on the content of the message.

In other words, the antispam will analyze your message to determine if it contains unwanted content or not. This analysis will help it to distinguish your e-mail containing an invitation to an event from another containing an ad for a famous little blue pill....

The problem is that an antispam cannot read the texts in your image. In other words, it will base its analysis on textual content and will not be able to analyze what you are talking about in your image. Some spammers have taken advantage of this " breach " by sending spam consisting only of images to avoid being filtered... But, as you probably know, antispam adapts to the threat and nowadays tends to say: "this message is made up only of images, I don't know if it is about an invitation or viagra so, potentially, it is an unwanted message". This explains why most messages composed only of images arrive as "spam" to their recipients....

To counterbalance this, you can add text around your image... but unfortunately, a disproportionate text/image ratio will make you start with a considerable disadvantage.

 

The problem of the weight of the message

If your message consists of only one image, this image will represent a significant weight.

Of course, you can always host it in the cloud so that it will have less impact on your message, but in any case, your recipients will still have to download it at some point to see it. As a result, your message may slowly appear to a recipient who has an Internet connection with a reduced speed.

 

The problem of links

You will not be able to put links on different parts of your single image (or you will have to trick it by cutting it out and reintegrating it, piece by piece in the message). Your only option will be to put a single global link on the whole image, which can be problematic if you had considered several clickable areas in the message...

 

You will not be able to have a Responsive mode

Your image being frozen, we will not be able to do anything else than resize it to adapt it to the reading medium (smartphone, computer, tablet...).

This will make your text embedded in your image too small to be read by your recipients, who will have to zoom in on it.

 

Bonus: Outlook hates large images

You should know that Microsoft Outlook (2007 and above) does not know how to correctly manage images larger than 1000px.

Your message may therefore (it is not always the case, who knows why...) not be displayed completely on this email client which, whatever we may think of it, still represents a large proportion of the reading tools.

 

Any solution?

As you will have understood, the use of a single large image as a message is not recommended in the world of e-mailing.

A solution exists and it consists in separating the graphic elements of your image to integrate them in the OxiMailing editor.

So take out the non-text elements from your image and enter the text directly into the editor. You will of course have to make some compromises, but for the right cause: your message will be better received by your recipients and will be displayed better!

Feel free to contact our support team if you need any clarification or assistance.

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