Animated GIFs: Not Just for GeoCities Sites

written by: Andrew Martin | February 20, 2013

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Ready for a word association test? Tell me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase animated GIF. Did you just picture a mid-1990s amateur website? Perhaps one created by your uncle, and hosted on GeoCities? If you didn’t, here is a great example of a common use of animated GIFs in the early days of the web:

Yeah. Ouch. In 1997, when I was in seventh grade, I made my first website, and although I’m ashamed to say it, it featured quite a few tacky animated GIFs.

If you spend a lot of time on internet forums, you may have instead pictured a meme animated GIF:

Bravo. But in all seriousness, animated GIFs have a very useful place in the world of online marketing, most notably in email marketing. In fact, Bluefly found that using an animated GIF increased CTR by 5% over a non-animated version. One of the biggest challenges in designing email newsletters is coping with the fact that many popular email clients do not support the majority of modern web design techniques. GIFs are a universally-supported image format, which, when used well, can greatly enhance your email marketing efforts. Here are a few examples of great applications for animated GIFs:

Harry and David sprinkled some holiday cheer onto this image promoting a one-day sale. The animated snowflakes add interest and draw in the eye without being so busy as to become an eyesore. This image is 99Kb; a (static) JPEG version would be around one third of that.

Amazon.com also went with a winter theme for this Black Friday email newsletter image. The yule logs are burning brightly in this clever use of GIF animation, attracting attention to the television, laptop, and tablet. The animation is actually just five frames, yet still weighs in at a hefty 192Kb (vs. about 60Kb for a non-moving JPEG version).

A simple animation can help enhance a call-to-action. Here is a CTA button used by Vodafone Netherlands (which apparently reads something to the effect of “see my offers” - any Dutch speakers in the house?). At just 7Kb, it gives the CTA a little “oomph” without slowing load time.

Tips for Using Animated GIFs in Email Marketing

1. Keep it simple - don’t go overboard. Too much animation on one page is unpleasant to view (for example, this blog post…haha).
2. Pay attention to file size - while it seems like a minor issue, file size really adds up quickly. Almost half of email opens now occur on mobile devices, many of which will be dealing with less-than-perfect signal strength.
3. The first frame is key - while the vast majority of email clients support animated GIFs, Outlook 2007+ loads only the first frame, displaying it as a static image. For this reason, make sure the first frame makes sense as a standalone image.

If used carefully (and tastefully), animated GIFs can be a valuable asset for online marketers everywhere; they can attract the viewer’s eyes to your products, or make your CTAs stand out just a little bit more. If your business wants to turbocharge its email marketing efforts, giving your subscribers a great user experience and delivering high conversion rates, give us a buzz. We’ve been helping our clients put their best feet forward online since 2007.