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DOUBLE DOG DARE: Alt-Tag Your Images with Funny Teasers

Sometimes people need a nudge to try something new, edgy or against the conventional wisdom. So here you go, we dare you—NO, we Double Dog Dare you—to consider this challenge from Lisa Harmon and Alex Madison of Smith-Harmon, who got the idea from the gals at Holland America. (Thanks, ladies—this one’s for you!)

Entice subscribers to enable images by alt-tagging suppressed images with funny teasers. Let’s take it up a notch in persuading our subscribers to enable images. Try putting your alt tags to work, using tempting prompts—like “Enable images—it’s worth it,” or “Enable images to get a great deal”—to tempt subscribers to see the light of your email magic.

This might work especially well for brands that already have a little edge or humor in their voices. Urban Outfitters and Land of Nod come right to mind as perfect candidates for having some alt-tag fun.

Urban Outfitters’ Aug. 29 email shows “Susie from the fashion blog” modeling UO tights with her own eclectic outfits, but the image-suppressed version just labels her images “Susie 1,” “Susie 2,” and “Susie 3.” What if the alt-tags said, “You don’t know how to wear tights until you see Susie. Enable images now!” or “Enable images to find out how tights should really be worn.” NOW I feel like I’m missing out on something....

A Land of Nod email from a few weeks ago (subject line: “Bye Bye Blankie”) features bedding for bigger kids, with the headline “Where do you go when your kid outgrows a blankie?” So cute. In the images-suppressed view, we only see the CTAs—not as adorable. What if they alt-tagged their hero image something like “What comes after the blankie? Enable images to find out!”?

Our emails make a bigger impact when our images show up, and attention-grabbing CTAs (like our beautiful, bulletproof buttons) increase clicks. Let’s get more people seeing them.

If you take up this dare, let us know how it went by commenting below. And if you have a Double Dog Dare for the eec community, let us know about that too.

-->See more Double Dog Dares.

Posted on September 17, 2008 9:31 AM | Permalink

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Comments (2)

Nick Stamoulis:

Definitely tempting... I'd definitely give kudos to those who did that in a campaign. It's a great idea :)

Posted by Nick Stamoulis | September 19, 2008 10:35 PM

Posted on September 19, 2008 22:35

Dylan Boyd:

Chad:

We have done this before and had good success. Alex Williams from our team wrote about it on http://www.returnonsubscriber.com here:
http://returnonsubscriber.com/2008/06/18/email-image-blocking-try-this-technique-of-mine/

Now it depends on your audience select in your campaign, but it can work out nice.

Posted by Dylan Boyd | October 1, 2008 12:22 AM

Posted on October 1, 2008 00:22

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Jordan Ayan is the chairman of Create-It!, a technology consulting organization, as well as the CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the leading email marketing companies. A two-time book author, a patent holder and a frequent speaker, Jordan has more than 20 years of experience in direct and database marketing. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Marco Marini is the CEO of ClickMail Marketing (CMM) and an acknowledged expert in e-marketing with over a decade and half's-worth of experience in the field. Before taking over as CEO, he was CMM's VP of Marketing & Operations. Marini has also held key marketing positions with CyberSource, eHealthInsurance, DoveBid and IBM Canada.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is communications director at email service provider Lyris. He has 20 years of experience from enterprise, SMB, agency and start-up marketing, communications and innovation roles at companies including Habeas, Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Philips Electronics and two of his own start-ups. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experience Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Kevin Senne is the Strategic Deliverability Director for Premiere Global Services. Kevin has been heavily involved in all facets of email marketing for more than a decade and he previously managed Email Operations for Travelocity.com. Kevin specializes in deliverability, strategy, and social media integratio and he focuses on helping marketers become permission-based one-to-one marketers. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

Kara Trivunovic currently serves as the senior director of strategic services for StrongMail Systems, where she is responsible for helping marketers optimize their email marketing programs for greater returns. Most recently Kara was founder and principal of The Email Advisor, a respected email marketing consultancy. Prior to launching The Email Advisor, Kara led strategic services for the email division of Premiere Global Services. Kara brings a unique perspective to the space having worked on the client, agency and provider side for 10 years.

Chris Wheeleris the director of deliverability at Bronto Software. He is leading the charge for ensuring both Bronto's customers and staff are well informed about email marketing practices and technology as well as being the face of Bronto deliverability externally. Previously, Chris created the internal deliverability program at Amazon.com alongside program managing the operations of the email team and was at an ESP leading a team of deliverability consultants. Besides being a frequent contributor on Deliverability.com, Chris is a part of many email industry forums, both business and technical. Read more.

Chad White is the research director at Smith-Harmon, an email marketing strategy and creative services agency. He is the founder of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.