If your email design is looking a bit ‘flat’ you might want to consider using an animated GIF to liven up your design. Although not commonly used in emails due to their impact on email file size and the extra work involved in creating them, animated GIFs can act as ‘design delighters’ for your subscribers and bring life to your designs.
Paul Boag referred to the use of animated GIFs in website design as:
Animated gifs can breathe some much needed life into the imagery on your website. They grab the users attention and act as design delighters, making your site stand out from that of the competition.
The same is true for emails. Not only do they grab the attention, animated GIFs can serve a more practical purpose by displaying more information about a product, while doing so in the limited space of an email.
For example, you can show how a shoe looks from multiple angles, how clothes move on a model, different outfit options for a jacket, or the range of colors or designs that a handbag comes in.
As I mentioned above, the main caveat for using animated GIFs in emails is the potential increase in filesize, especially if you are animating larger images.
In the list of examples below, the largest ones top out at 700-800KB, and file size is recognized as one of the factors that can impact email deliverability. So, use your animated GIFs judiciously and always try to minimize the size of the image that is being animated.
The selection of emails below provide a variety of examples of creative uses of animated GIFs in emails.
Anthropologie
Art.com
Boden
Ralph Lauren
Cusp
Banana Republic
Free People
Horchow
[via STYLEcampaign]
Jack Spade
[via Litmus]
Kate Spade
Home Depot
Cusp (again!)
Last Call by Neiman Marcus
Tory Burch
Boden
Cusp (again!)
Excellent examples. I’ve not made any .gifs for a while but I think I’ve now found a reason to.
Cheers
Greg
Incredible post . I love the utilization of GIFs in email and social platforms. Animated GIFs can be great so long as they aren’t flashing an ad. I always create the design so that the first image works irrespective of the animation in case the scroll is blocked.
GIF images are very helpful to get the customer’s attention. Changing colors, texts or a part of the picture always looks attractive. I usually visit my Google plus’s profile once in a week, and I move through the posts giving a slight look to them, but whenever I see some GIF image, I stop a while to see the complete animation.
I don’t know — a lot of email providers are more likely to mark an html email as spam as opposed to a plain text email.
I really love the one with the octopus. Great examples, thanks for share.
Great examples of creative way to solve problem. Now e-mail marketing must be fun and creative.
ahah nice gifs….but i hate those kind of emailssss!!
Great compile of gifs in marketing. Never know animated gifs can be in such way. I am planning to make one for my site too. This post certainly serve as an inspiration for me!
I really like the designs, thank you for sharing them for inspiration