Email Design

GIF it up for animated emails

Image of designer comparing images

Computer technology moves quickly. Unless you’re a GIF. The ever-popular image format has existed largely unchanged since the late 80s (the late-ies?).

Even the phrase itself has become a household name, with libraries of animated GIFs at your disposal on social media or instant-messaging applications. But you know where else you can find them? In emails.

Establishing the ground rules

GIFs are old tech and so are emails in many ways. For the most part, they work well together without any trickery.

Outlook, in its various desktop application incarnations, is the but. Many versions will only show the first frame of animation as a static image, and one version loops three times before adding a button that lets the user play it again. Why? Because.

Either design the GIF so that the first frame isn’t design-breaking on its own, or maybe even swap out the image altogether on Outlook.

Rubbish use of GIFs

Slideshows. Let’s say you have multiple products, or multiple variations of a product. It makes sense to put them in an email and let the customer see their options.

But what does not make sense is to present them via a slideshow. You’re dictating what the customer sees, and when. If the customer likes the blue version of your product, they’re only going to see it for 25% of the time while your GIF ticks through the blue, green, red and yellow pictures. Nobody is going to stick around and wait. Scrap the GIF in this scenario and lay the images out in the design instead.

Example of a GIF-based slideshow
We made this horrible example ourselves as we don’t want to pick on anyone, or get sued.

Okay use of GIFs

Pseudo-video. We live in the age of instant-access, high-definition video. It’s possible to convert a video – or more likely a portion of a video – to an animated GIF. But bear in mind the following:

  • It’ll be a far cry from the modern viewer’s high definition expectations.
  • It’ll look grainy. GIFs are limited to a paltry 256 colours. Your computer can display millions.
  • It’ll be a silent movie. GIFs are purely an image format, not an audio one.
  • The file size can get out of hand. Even on fast modern connections, that could result in a short delay before the image appears. And many email platforms set an individual file size limit.
  • You’ll probably need to butcher it a little. That means reducing image quality through compression, and potentially dropping the frame rate.

Here’s one we made earlier:

Animated GIF converted from a stock video

We found a stock video to our liking and converted it to an animated GIF. We had to ruthlessly edit and compress the file ’til it was of an email-friendly size. The end result is significantly degraded in vibrancy and quality. The conversion process felt more like vandalism than optimisation.

But it’s not all bad news. A short GIF-icated video snippet can still be used to powerful effect in an email. Hey, maybe your brand even has a grungy lo-fi character. But consider why you want to drop a pseudo-video into your message. Are you communicating something useful that can’t be succinctly conveyed in words? Or is it purely for eye candy? If it’s the latter, it probably won’t have the impact that you hope.

Good use of GIFs

Simple animation. Pizza Express do a lot of things right in email, and in the kitchen I presume. This visually-appealing animated GIF is one of them.

'Prizes are calling' spin-the-wheel animation from a Pizza Express email

The limited colour palette of a GIF is well-suited to flat design and simple shapes, both in terms of rendering quality and sensible file size. A little bit of animation can help to bring your email to life.

Great use of GIFS

Show your customer something about your product. Yes, I touched on this earlier… but it’s important. People simply do not read reams of copy in a marketing email. You may want to tell them every exciting detail about your product, but they don’t want to read it. So why not show them instead?

If ever a picture was worth a thousand words, it’s this animated GIF demonstrating Warby Parker’s Memory Metal.

GIF demonstrating the flexibility of Memory Metal

That’s a GIF with purpose. Useful, right?