One thing I always tell people is that their email marketing campaign should have a mix of pictures and text. The worst thing you can do is send out an email that is largely just one big picture because these days most email programs (web-based and desktop-based) disable (ie. Turn-off) images by default.

Here is an example of an email that I just received from my car dealership:

What do you think about that email?

Needless to say, I can’t see this email achieving any of their objectives since most people probably would not click to download the entire message after opening up and seeing it was blank.

In addition, the likelihood of this email going to junk/spam is higher (it actually went to my junk folder) because there is no legitimate content. Everything is hidden in the image, so when contact-based spam filters skew towards the sides of caution, they will most surely raise a red flag at this email.

When I choose to display images, it ended up displaying a dreadfully long flyer.

I get the feeling they took a print flyer and sent it out, which is hardly the best course of action.

This surely isn’t the reason the car industry is struggling, but maybe with better marketing they’d sell more cars!