Some years ago there was a push for digital, i.e. numerical, displays for speedometers in motor vehicles and to show just how cool you were, when in a pub you would tell your friends that you were doing 67 mph, and then just drifted into 69. There was no way a driver with one of the old-fashioned analogue dials would be so exact. 

A speedometer, as with the images in our email marketing campaigns, needs to convey information. A driver doesn’t have to know the exact speed at a precise moment of time. All they need to know was how close they are to the limit.

Your images need to convey information instantly. A glance is all that should be needed for a subscriber to get the message you want to put over. The question arises, what information do you want them to receive?

If the hook of your marketing email is that your product is remarkably compact, an image with it against an object where the size is not only well known, but universally constant, such as a full-size keyboard, is all you need to show. No pretty flowers in the background; just the message.

In the same way that you can ignore grammatical niceties in copy, strip all unnecessary information from the image. Don’t bother about dividing thirds and the intricacies of eye movement if all you are showing is a particular and precise message. If your chosen image does that, everything else is superfluous.

Focus the image of your hook and don’t consider anything else. Email marketing is all about influencing subscribers to purchase in a very short time, so make it easy for them to be convinced. 

As with digital speedometers, if you’re putting over lots of information, your subscriber has to focus on it. They’re not good at that. They want everything at a glance, targeted to the email marketing list they’re on. The trick is to ensure all the information you need to convey is present in as simple and easy to assess method as possible. At a glance in fact. Just like an analogue speedometer.