In both cases, the emails showed up in my inbox as almost completely blank. I had a tiny red x in the middle, and some standard footer information at the bottom.

Every single bit of information, every graphic, every design element, every word and call to action was invisible to me. All of it. The only reason I right-clicked on the red x to download the images was because I knew these guys and I wanted to see what they were up to.

Now, I’m an email marketing professional. I know how to reset my email software so images show up in my emails. But I don’t want to, because most email clients are configured to suppress images by default. And I’m fascinated by how many emails are sent as image only.

What these guys need, what email marketer’s need, is an email rendering tool so they can see how their emails will be delivered. They could use Pivotal Veracity to test the email rendering. Or they could simply sign up for a variety of free email accounts like Gmail and Yahoo, and see how the emails show up in those inboxes.

One of these friends has now sent out three emails this way, as just images. If you do right click, you’ll find the email is almost all text. So why in the world deliver it as an image? And despite my sending him a screenshot of what people like me are getting, twice, I today received yet another red x email from him today. And when I replied back that he should at least put teaser text in the subject line if he’s going to continue to send his text emails as images, all I got was a request to forward the email onto my friends. Something tells me he’s not listening!

If only I could get him to use an email rendering tool, maybe he’d listen!

Over the holidays, I was more than surprised. I was shocked at how many emails I received that were simply that: a few boxes with red x’s, and the text telling me Outlook blocked the image. Almost daily, I received some holiday greeting from a well-meaning vendor or partner that did nothing but raise my eyebrows…because many of these emails came from marketers who should have known better, and some even came from people in the (gasp!) email marketing industry.

I would prefer to keep images turned on so emails would render the way the sender wants them too, but I think it’s my duty as the CEO of an email marketing vendor to pay attention to what percentage of email marketers are paying attention to email rendering.

Too many marketers put their heads in the sand, not recognizing that they absolutely need to know how their emails render upon delivery.

Consider the MarketingSherpa article an email rendering tool with its three techniques for designing for image blocking.

But your first and foremost email rendering tool needs to be your willingness to accept that most people simply do not have images turned on. No matter how much you like the look of the postcard-style email, you might as well not send it at all. Or at least only send to 33% of your list, the amount of people who will see it in all its email design glory.

But do you really want to lose out on that 66% who won’t see it?

See the email rendering tool otherwise known as the MarketingSherpa article.

The Online Marketing Summit 2010 (OMS) takes place next week in San Diego and email marketing vendor ClickMail will be there offering an Online Marketing Lab on email deliverability and reputation. Sign up for a one-on-one session with ClickMail, then submit an email example a few days before the show. Prior to OMS, we’ll analyze your reputation, deliverability, layout and email rendering, and produce several diagnostic reports. During the lab at OMS, we’ll go over the reports with you, and make recommendations to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

Make time to be at OMS and work directly with ClickMail, for free, expert consulting. Register for your one-on-one email marketing consultation with ClickMail Marketing today, before the slots are all filled. Each coaching session lasts just 20 minutes, so you’ll still have plenty of time for other OMS activities. Choose a time slot anywhere between 9:20 and 4:20 on Tuesday the 23rd, and 10:00 and 4:00 on Wednesday the 24th.

Americans are on the go, especially during leisure time. How do you market to your customers when they’re not sitting at the computers? Some will have PDAs and BlackBerries and iPhones, but trust me, they’re not all that interested in your email marketing when out and about and scanning email on their phone: As great as your offer might be, chances are good that your email marketing campaign is a heck of a lot less effective on a tiny PDA screen than a full-size computer screen.

Does that mean you’re hostage to that customer getting back in front of her laptop or PC before she gets your email marketing? Not if you’re moving towards mobile.

Don’t shudder! Mobile isn’t as scary as you think. That’s because email solutions provider Lyris offers a Mobile Marketing How-to Guide that not only tells you how to do mobile technically, but also gets you thinking about how email marketing can be adapted to the mobile format. For example, think timing: The whitepaper suggests sending an offer for a pizza during the “big game.” A text message to a cell phone offering a deal on pizza at just about half-time? And the recipient can simply call the number in the text message to order? Brilliant. The ultimate in relevant, a recurring theme in this email marketing blog.

In just 6 pages, Lyris lays out the whys and how tos of mobile marketing in easy-to-understand, easy-to-act upon steps.

This email marketing whitepaper is available at our online email marketing library . Download it, act on it, profit from it.

A fascinating bit of information on email image blocking can be found on page six of MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide:

“In the version with blocked images, we see a higher percentage reading the entire headline instead of scanning and skipping down, which appears to be related to the pull of the image below. When that image is removed, people spend a bit more time reading. That underscores the power and danger of compelling images – they can engage and attract the user’s attention, but they may be stealing it from a key piece of content.”

Wow: who would have thought that image blocking could actually be a good thing!

It all comes down to content. In the end, what does it take to get a user to open your email, click through, and buy? An image can engage, yes, but you still need a message to drive an action.

Most email viewers have images suppressed by default; and users don’t bother to change the setting. That means all that time spent deliberating over which picture to use, all the money spent on that cool stock photo from Getty Images, all the care that went into that stellar product shot of your newest doohickey could well be for naught.

A 14-page excerpt from the MarketingSherpa guide is available for download here.

Imagine all your pretty pictures replaced with empty boxes…empty except for the accusing little red x in the corner. Sadly this is an all too common scene in the email marketing industry.

Not worried? You should be. The newest retail email rendering study from the Email Experience Council and SubscriberMail is out, and it’s chockfull of numbers that should make email marketers sit up, take notice…and call their designers right away.

Go to http://blog.emailexperience.org/2008/06/retail_email_rendering_benchma.html for the executive summary. We won’t rehash it here, but note this stat:

“Only 42% of the 104 top online retailers included in our study designed emails that were a good mix of HTML text and images, and only 63% used alt tags adequately or extensively.”

How do you get past this? By no longer thinking of your emails as direct mail or web pages. You don’t have to abandon graphics altogether and stick with text only. But you do have to be more thoughtful in your design. And test. Always test.

If nothing else prompts you to take action and rethink your approach to html email, consider the dollars. The summary states that email generates $48.29 for every dollar spent on it, but that ROI could jump to $52.69 if all emails were optimized for image blocking. That’s $4.40. Per dollar. Not a bad return. And you get much nicer looking emails too.