Anne Holland of MarketingSherpa wrote about converting email with images turned off. Quoting a statistic that 59% of consumers and 90% of business email users view some or all of their email with images turned off. In the article she highlighted an example of an email she received from a HomeAway email newsletter (A vacation lodgings firm).

See what the newsletter looked like with images turned off. http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/homeaway/1b.html

The good: Each image included “alt tags” and clickable links that allows for clicks to specific sections of the travel website.  The tags and clickable links provides users with options even when they have no idea how to view the images. Contrast this to the Borders Rewards email that is filled with some of the best email designs but are blank when images are turned off.

For designers, another solution with blocked images is to setup the email using tables instead of Div layouts. This allows you to display emails with blocked images while still maintaining designability.

See the screenshots below for an example of this.

Borders email with images blocked

Borders email without images blocked

L2 email without images blocked

L2 email without images blocked

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