Easy Email Marketing: 10 Simple Steps For Creating And Sending Marketing Email Your Customers Will Love

Step 5: Use A Hero Image

Welcome to Step 5. You’re halfway there! This is a big moment. I’m proud of the effort you’ve made. Let’s talk about a way to make your email really shine: the Hero Image.

Hero Image To The Rescue

A Hero Image is a large image, prominently placed front and center in your email. The Hero Image is the first visual element a customer encounters; it presents an overview of the email’s most important message.

One big, beautiful image is all you need. In fact, it’s all your readers have patience for. They’re going to scan your email and make a snap decision (hopefully that decision is “Yes! I want that!”). They aren’t going to wait for a bunch of pictures to load. So stick with one Hero Image and make it good.

If you have an awesome picture of your product, great! Use it in your email. If you don’t have a good original image or the ability to create one, I recommend grabbing an appropriate photo from Unsplash. They’re beautiful and, best of all, free to use.

But Images Are Always Optional

Of course, using an image is always optional. Some of the best marketing emails are only text. It just depends on your style and your business’s brand. Do what’s right for you and your customers, and what you think will get them to click on your offer.

Make The Image Match The Offer

It may be tempting to use a generic picture in your email, especially if you grab one from a site like Unsplash. But be careful here and make sure the image you select directly relates to the offer in your email. That is, if you’re emailing your customers about coffee, make sure the picture shows coffee cups, coffee shops, people drinking coffee etc. Not a cat playing a keyboard. But a cat drinking coffee might work, if that’s your style.

Add Words, But Just A Few

Okay, you have a Hero Image of your product worthy of the name. Could you make it even better by adding some words like “20% Off!” or your logo to the image itself? Maybe. Tread carefully here. We’re after an image that wows readers and helps them understand your offer in just a glance. Too much visual information can be confusing and have the opposite effect. Like this example.

But a few well-placed words on your Hero Image can be really effective, too! You’ve probably seen emails that are just a Hero Image with the offer on them. They looked good and may have even moved you to click on the offer. Like this one.

Okay, but how do I do that? I’m not good at Photoshop, you’re probably saying. Me, neither. Good news: Canva is an easy-to-use online image editor that I’ve used for years to make professional-looking email images for clients. (Shh, don’t tell.) Just upload your properly sized image, click on it, add a simple message or import your logo, then download your updated Hero Image for use in your email. Canva’s free version is all you need.

Just The Right Size

Your email service will have a specific limit on how big or small (in pixels) your image can be. This is to make sure the picture looks good in the email and on a wide variety of screens. And don’t worry about what pixels are if you’re not familiar with them. Just go by the number of pixels required. Here are Mailchimp’s image size requirements, for example: 500px (pixel) width, variable height.

Odds are your image, or one you grab from Unsplash or elsewhere, will be much larger than 500 pixels wide. Fear not, my friend. You can easily make a large photo just the right size for your email with Canva. Here are Canva’s instructions. There are also plenty of ways to do it with the apps you already have on your phone or computer.

How to crop and resize photos on your iPhone and iPad - iMore

How to resize an image on Android - Perfect Cube

How to resize an image on Windows - Scottie’s Tech

How to resize an image on Mac - Cult of Mac

Next Is Step 6

I hope you’re feeling good about using a Hero Image in your email.

Next I’ll show you the one and only template you need. And it’s all because of mobile phones.