Many people who are new to email marketing are tempted to create their message as a single large image containing both graphic elements and text. This is indeed the easy solution, as an image creation software offers much more graphic freedom than a message editor.

⚠️However, we do not recommend this approach for several reasons that we will explain below.

The risk of being classified as spam

The first problem you will encounter when using a single large image as a message is spam filters.

As a reminder, these are tools that protect your recipients’ email boxes. There is not just one spam filter, there are thousands of different ones, however, some of them include a test on the message content.

In other words, the spam filter will analyze your message to determine if it contains unwanted content or not. It is through this analysis that it will be able to differentiate your email containing an event invitation from another containing an ad for a famous little blue pill…

The issue is that a spam filter cannot read the text within your image. In other words, it will base its analysis on the textual content and will not be able to analyze what you are talking about in your image. Some spammers have taken advantage of this “loophole” by sending spam composed solely of images to avoid being filtered… But, as you probably know, spam filters adapt to the threat and tend to say today: “this message consists solely of images, I don’t know if it’s about an invitation or Viagra so, potentially, it’s an unwanted message”. This explains why some messages consisting only of images end up in the “spam” folder for their recipients…

To counterbalance this, you can add text around your image… but unfortunately, a disproportionate text / image ratio will put you at a disadvantage.

The issue of message weight

If your message consists of only one image, it will represent a significant weight.

Of course, you can always host it on the cloud to reduce its weight in your message, but in any case, your recipients will still need to download it at some point to view it. As a result, your message may display slowly for a recipient with a slow internet connection.

The issue of links

You will not be able to put links on different parts of your single image (or you will have to be clever by cutting it and reintegrating it, piece by piece, into the message). Your only option will be to put a single global link on the entire image, which can be problematic if you had planned for multiple clickable areas in the message…

You will not have a Responsive mode

Since your image is fixed, we will not be able to do anything other than reduce it to fit the reading device (smartphone, computer, tablet…).

This will result in your text embedded in your image being too small to be read by your recipients who will have to zoom in.

Bonus: Outlook dislikes large images

You should know that Microsoft Outlook (2007 and above) does not handle images larger than 1000px correctly.

Your message may therefore (not always, who knows why…) not display completely on this email client which, regardless of what we think, still represents a large proportion of reading tools.

What is the solution?

As you may have understood, using a single large image as a message is not recommended in the world of email marketing.

However, rest assured, there is a solution, and it involves separating the graphic elements of your image to integrate them into the OxiMailing editor.

So, take out of your image the elements that are not text and enter the text directly into the editor. You will of course have to make some compromises but it is for a good cause: your message will be better received by your recipients and will display better!

Feel free to contact our support team if you need clarification or assistance.