ALT text is not something to ignore when putting together your email creative. Not all email clients will display your images’ ALT tags, but they’re still worth using. In the likely event that a recipient will have images blocked upon viewing your email content, the ALT text is what they will see first; if the text is visible and enticing, more recipients will open and click through your mailings.

It’s best to make your ALT text concise and clear, but try to use enough text to convey the content of the image. If you have a shiny orange image button covered with text and photos of packages, set it’s ALT attribute with just the text needed to convey the value – i.e. “50% Off Shipping – Click Here” (assuming you were, unfortunately, unable to use a bulletproof button in the first place).

Most email clients will simply cut off the ALT text relative to the size of the image. Keep small images’ ALT texts set to just a word or two, if possible, and limit your more descriptive lines of text to your bigger images.

Both the left and right versions above were coded at the same width, but the image on the right side did not have height and width attributes set (having these set is a best practice). As a result, most email clients stretched the image space to allow for all of the ALT text, ignoring the tables’ set width and breaking apart the email content.

More interesting words from the industry on using ALT tags for email:

• Using ALT tags properly in emails and XHTML
• HTML Email + Alt Tags = More Bagels Sold
• Using ALT Tags in Email Design

Questions? Have another email design topic you want to hear about? Feel free to shoot me an email.

Celeste Odell | Design Services