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BizReport : Email Marketing : May 24, 2007
AOL blocks images in web-based mail
AOL has joined other web-based email services by disabling images by default, forcing some email marketers to rethink email content and format.
The recent revamp of AOL’s web-based email service's interfaces has included disabling images in email. From now on, AOL.com and AIM.com interfaces will block images by default. AOL’s desktop email software, AOL 9.0, already features this function.
The implications to marketers range from the blocking of banner ads within HTML newsletters to problems tracking open rates. However, as observed by George Bilbrey of Return Path, images will only be blocked when sent to newly subscribed AOL.com and AIM.com users,vso the impact on open rates will not necessarily be as alarming as some reports might suggest.
There are ways of ensuring images are received by AOL’s web-based email users. Images won’t be blocked if sent by senders that qualify for AOL’s Enhanced Whitelist, and if a sender’s email address is in the recipient's address book it will allow the images to be displayed.
In recent research, the Email Experience Council discovered that 21 percent of 1,000 emails reviewed appeared blank when viewed using email clients that disabled images. More than a quarter of the emails displayed copy but contained dysfunctional links.
Tags: AOL, email marketing, images
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Comments
According to AOL (vs. 3rd party observations), the image defaults and interface apply to all subscribers *not* just to 'new' subscribers signing up after 5/22. However, in all cases, both for new and old subscribers, if the user/subscriber manually changed or changes their settings to keep images on, images will be on and their manual setting will override the 'defaults'. As odd as it might be, the old version of AOL.com allowed users to change their setting to always display images even though images were already on. The reason for this is that the old AOl.com interface was *supposed* to turn images off by default like AOL 9 but did not. Effectively, AOL has now made AOL.com function like AOL 9 as it was supposed to. Thus the setting to turn images 'on' was available in the old AOL.com interface even though its unlikely most users would have bothered with it given images were on. If, however, a user did manually change the setting to images on - this manual setting change will override the defaults as noted.
Posted by: Deirdre Baird on May 24, 2007 14:45