Your Holiday GIF Guide: Festive GIFs to Spice Up Your Holiday Emails

The holidays are nearly upon us. Which means it's time to plan your holiday email marketing – like Black Friday sale emails, festive newsletters or even just season's greetings. But we know the holidays are hectic. So we have a gift to make your festive email marketing a bit easier: GIFs! To spice up your emails and spike your click-through rates, we created 16 email-optimized GIFs just for you. And on top of all those GIFs, we wrote a guide to explain how to use them.

Download your GIFs

Without further ado, download your GIFs below! Here's how: Step 1: Find the animated GIF that you want to use in your email. Step 2: Save it to your computer by either right clicking the image and selecting “Save Image,” or by dragging the image to your desktop. Step 3: Upload the image into your email template. … And that's it! Your festive GIF will be ready to go.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sale

Having a big Black Friday or Cyber Monday sale this year? These GIFs are perfect for catching your subscribers' attention in the header of your email:

Happy holidays

Include one of these festive GIFs in a holiday newsletter or sale:

Happy New Year

Motivate your subscribers to start their year right or send them a celebratory email with one of these Happy New Year GIFs:

How can I use these GIFs in my emails?

There are a few different ways you can use the GIFs in this guide. Try one of these three GIF placements:

Above your headline

Add a GIF above your email headline to catch people's attention right away. In the email below, we used the train GIF (which you can find above!) to add motion at the top of the email:

In the body of your email

You can also place a GIF in the body of your email to break up sections of content. In the example below, we decreased the size of the train GIF and placed it between the two paragraphs in this email. This is a nice way to visually break up the content in the email.

At the end of your email

Sometimes GIFs can distract your subscribers. Instead of reading the content of your email, they may just watch your GIF move. To avoid this, you could place a GIF at the very end of your email, like we did in the example below: This adds fun and festivity to the email, but places the primary focus on your messaging and call-to-action button.

GIF best practices

GIFs can make your emails perform better. (Think higher click-through rates and happier subscribers!) But there are some best practices you should follow to optimize your GIF usage and avoid common mistakes. Here are 11 best practices we recommend when using GIFs in your emails: 1. GIF placement is important. A GIF in the wrong location within your email could actually hurt your click-through rates. Make sure your GIF doesn't reduce the visibility of written content or distract your subscribers. 2. If you decide to use a GIF in your email, consider removing other images so that subscribers aren’t distracted by too many visuals or conflicting styles. 3. As a general rule, you should only use one GIF in an email, unless you have strong rationale for using more than one. 4. People often click on GIFs. Hyperlink your GIF to the landing page you’d like people to visit. 5. Always test your GIF-tastic emails before sending. Most email clients will display GIFs, but there are a some exceptions – Outlook 2007-2013 and Windows Phone 7 are two of them. In these clients, the GIFs will display as a static image. 6. Keep your GIF’s file size as small as possible when you’re using it in an email – less than 40KB is a good size to aim for. You can use Photoshop to decrease the file size if need be. 7. If you’re creating your own GIF, include your call to action in the first frame. That way, your subscribers can click through even if the animation doesn’t work. 8. Your GIF should be relevant to the rest of the content in your email. Make sure it fits in with your subject line, call to action and other text in your message. 9. Not every single email you send needs a GIF. Only use GIFs when you think or know they’ll help your email perform better. 10. No matter what GIF you use, make your call to action loud and clear. 11. Don’t be afraid to experiment with GIFs! Test adding GIFs in different locations in your email and see what performs best.

Share your GIF emails with us!

We'd love to see how you use GIFs in email. Comment below and share one of your GIF emails by posting an image. Or, explain how you're using GIFs in email!

The post Your Holiday GIF Guide: Festive GIFs to Spice Up Your Holiday Emails appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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