Would you want your email subscribers to see this in their inbox?
This message is a big Thanksgiving thank you from Frontier Airlines to its frequent fliers. How much gratitude would you feel upon seeing this? Not much. (Hate to pick on Frontier…as airlines go they’re pretty good. Could use some help with email, though.)
We’ll skip the diatribe against image only emails. They’re rarely useful as they bump up against problems displaying content all the time.
The thing is, this is an easy problem to fix. Adding alt tag values to the primary images would help. An alt tag for the main body image that says “Frontier Airlines wishes you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving!” would show that text in place of the main image for those with images turned off. Â A simple “Frontier eSpecials” alt tag for the header image would be simple to add to the template and cover needs in every message.
Basically, this comes off as lazy. Add an interesting and informative alt tag for your primary images. Move on.
Is there a place for image only emails? Perhaps. If the message is dependent upon visuals then perhaps it’s worth an image-only message. Fashion retailers or photographers could fit into this category. Even those senders could use alt tags, however.
How does this email look with images turned on? It’s okay but furthering the irony is that most of the image is text. It would have been easy to create this message with a mix of text and images.
