Sometimes your eye is your best email rendering tool.

Can we ever say enough about the importance of the Preview Pane…and testing? Not yet! There are too many examples of email best practices being ignored, and ineffective Preview Panes are the result.

The biggest issue, seems to me, or should I say the most flagrant disregard of email best practices, is ignoring the significance of image blocking, especially on the Preview Pane. Jeanne Jennings gives us yet another example, comparing one version with the images on versus one version with the images blocked. Among the glitches that resulted:

 • The newsletter name disappeared.
• The headline disappeared.
• The navigation bar disappeared.
• The photo disappeared.

As she points out, what you’re left with is a Preview Pane that does nothing to get the recipient to open and engage with the email. What a waste of effort that is, to adhere to all the email best practices that get you into the inbox, then not take the next step to get that email opened and acted upon.

Note: I wasn’t surprised by this Preview Pane, because I pay a lot of attention to who is following best practices for email marketing (and who isn’t) in my own inbox. But there was one element that surprised me: the navigation bar. In the USA Today email, the navigation bar must have been an image too, because it doesn’t show up in the images blocked version. That struck me as especially odd, for some reason…

Take a quick look at Jeanne’s comparison and then go do a quick review of your own Preview Pane. Are you designing for blocked image? Or ignoring some of these best practices for email marketing?

And remember: Sometimes your best email rendering tool is your eyes! See what it looks like yourself, with images blocked!

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.

The article is easy to read with plenty of samples to illustrate his points. It’s a little scary too, I confess. Even as a seasoned email marketer, I’m constantly amazed at how different results can be in different email clients! This article illustrates that point really well.

It’s also yet another reminder that the only way to ensure your emails look and act the way you intend them to once you send your email marketing campaign is to test, test and test.

Think of it this way: If you don’t test, you don’t need to worry about your email marketing ROI, because there won’t be any to speak of or point to when it’s time to argue for next year’s budget!