Should email marketers bring back animation?

Say what you will about animation - that it is too old school, that users will ignore it or worse not even open animated emails - a new study from the Email Experience Council's RetailEmail blog indicates it is time to dust off animation and add it back into email marketing campaigns.

by Kristina Knight

Jeanniey Mullen, founder of the Email Experience Council. “With all of the issues surrounding spam, animation fell out of favor. Today, appropriately used, animation has become an optimal way to increase attention and effectiveness of emails.”

Used selectively, the study found that animation can raise click throughs and conversion rates. In fact, their research found that about 34% of online retailers have used some sort of animation in their emails in the past year.

Animation is best used to show more options by giving the user several products that cycle as the email is read and it can encourage users to keep reading by drawing them down the page. It can demonstrate different features and highlight specific areas of the email message.

Overusing animation, however, can have the opposite effect. Animation should not be used in every email message or several times in one mailing. The key is to use an animated area to enhance or highlight certain aspects of a campaign. And remember, the most important thing marketers can include in an email campaign is information about the sale, the product or the deal being offered.