68% of millennials use and like seeing visual content like emojis, GIFs, and stickers in their email. Unsurprisingly, only 37% of people over 65 have the same opinion. Therefore if you have a target market of primarily people under 65, use more visual content.
The abbreviation GIF is short for Graphics Interchange Format. It’s a series of images that are shown at a very fast speed.
Beware, GIFs can be a bit more difficult to display than static images but they are truly worth the extra bit of effort to use them as GIFs are powerful.
Power of Animated GIFs
For the past two years, animated GIFs have been trendy in content marketing and email marketing. GIFs without any doubt add more value to your email and enhance your message to the reader.
GIFs can enhance your message in 2 ways
- Shows how the reader is currently feeling
- Shows how the reader wants to be feeling
You may have seen GIFs that display emotions of feeling upset, overworked, confused or having fun on social media. These GIFs are powerful to use as it shows you understand your reader. By showing understanding to these emotions, you can nurture the relationship with your reader.
Why Companies Are Using GIFs
GIFs have been responsible for increasing conversion rates for companies that are actively using gifs. According to Hawke Media, when they have used GIFs they have found that it adds value to the reader. This value has translated for there CTR an increase of 26% and an increase in conversion rates by 103%.
With these amazing results that you can get with using gifs, here are 12 examples of how you can use gifs in email marketing.
Example #1 American Apparel
Using just the key benefit of T-shirts that have been “power washed” to make them “super soft”. This alone would not grab much attention from your readers. However, using a gif that simulates T-shirts being washed in an imaginary washing machine will catch your reader’s eyes and imagination.
Example #2 Amazon
Amazons simple animation having the fire instantly draws in your reader’s eyes into the gif. Plus looking at a roaring fire, it is triggering images in their reader’s minds of a cold winter outside. Giving the reader’s desire to stay at home instead of going out to the shops. Therefore, readers would need to use Amazon to still have their goods delivered for any Black Friday bargains.
Example #3 Jack Spade
This GIF was included in an email sent out as part of Jack Spade’s Autumn Campaign. Showcasing the brand’s products in an effective and eye-catching way with the help of an animated GIF in email.
Example #4 Sprout Social
Sprout Social uses an animated GIF cleverly to show off all the latest functions and interactions of their latest iPhone app.
Example #5 Banana Republic
In this GIF, Banana Republic shows readers the different designs of handbags. Making the product more appealing to the reader’s eyes before they even have had a chance of reading the content of the email.
Example #6 Chanel
Chanel is now even using gifs to demonstrate its products including this watch. You see how the watch slowly constructs itself until we see the finished product. Chanel sees the power of gifs and how people consume content are changing.
Example #7 VUE Cinemas
VUE cinemas are not shy from using gifs themselves. On a star wars promotion, they used GIFs to create a bigger buzz and sell more tickets.
Example #8 BooHoo
To kick start the summer holiday sales, Boohoo created this eye-catching gif that is very bright and gives you that summer holiday feeling. All well designed to lure readers to click on the button ‘Holiday Shop’.
Example #9 Treatwell
This GIF was used on a Facebook post but could be used in email marketing. Sticking to a 3-color palette, the result is bold and memorable. Though the GIF is bright and bold, it doesn’t provide too much distraction from the main copy.
Example #10 Schweppes
Schweppes keeps its gifs dark and mysterious in conveying an air of modern sophistication. Its style of animation is slow and smooth to encourage readers to view the idea that it is a beverage they can enjoy.
Example #11 Nike
Nike has this great eye-catching GIF for their email marketing campaign for their promotion. When you first see the graphic, it looks like a standard one. Then after a couple of seconds, it starts flashing at you and makes you really pay attention to it and is a great way of engaging with their email subscribers.
Example #12 Kate Spade
Kate Spade’s gif allows their email subscribers to visualize how the product shall look before they have even made the purchase when being redirected to the website. What is equally impressive about this GIF is the words used and the contrasting colors. All of these elements have been put together well to entice their email subscribers to make a purchase or 3.
