1 in 2 Marketers Have Used Animated GIFs in Their Email Campaigns

January 16, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Digital | Email

Experian-Email-Marketing-Creative-Trends-Jan2013Experian Marketing Services has released a new email market study [download page] exploring brands’ acquisition and engagement tactics. One section takes a look at emerging creative trends, finding that 52% of respondents report having used an animated GIF (named the Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year in 2012) in their email creatives. Far fewer have used horizontal or multidirectional scroll (16%), video (through LiveClicker, etc.), or cinemagraphs (5%), with 45% having used none of these features. The report notes that 72% of Experian clients who have utilized animated GIFs or cinemagraphs see higher transaction-to-click rates.

Turning to testing practices, the study finds that virtually all respondents (97%) have performed subject line tests, while 81% have tested creative. Other popular testing types include time of day (50%), call-to-action (43%), and frequency (39%).

Of the tests performed on email campaigns, subject lines were most commonly cited as having the biggest impact (68%), followed by creative (50%). Just 17% said that time of day had the most impact.

As far as subject lines go, 21% of respondents said they have used symbols (such as hearts or stars) in a subject line of at least one of their emails, while an additional 28% haven’t yet but would like to.

Analyses of subject line performance by keyword and length can be found here for the B2B sector and here for a variety of other sectors.

About the Data: The Experian survey respondents come from 8 verticals. 49% are retailers, with consumer products and services brands the next most highly represented (19%).

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