Welcome to the final installment of our Email @ 50 series. For the last article, Email @ 50 contributors got together and discussed on Slack everything that they learned from writing this series and what they expect out of the future of email. Read through the transcript below!

Based on your experience writing articles in this series, what did you learn about email with respect to your discipline?

 For me, it was a good opportunity to take a step back and see how far we've come with email marketing over the course of my career. When I got started in advertising/marketing in the early 2010's I feel like we were just scratching the surface of marketing emails—mainly improving design and layout and trying to determine the best practices for email on mobile.

I also remember a lot of conceptual ideas regarding automation, customization, and using data to better improve the user's experience that are now common practice. Things like abandon cart emails, auto-response emails to lead forms or reservations, or responsive design that looks good on all devices.

 is by far the best tool at this point for fast email development that works across the board. Putting together a list of tools, it with Litmus provides the best experience right now if you are making emails by hand, after looking back at our old process of developing emails, it’s a night and day difference.

I was surprised to find that majority of emails in 2020 were opened on a phone as opposed to desktop... Makes design simplicity that much more important. Design has always been tricky for email specifically, but when you are working with so many different constraints and devices and platforms. There's so much that works on one and not on another that the most important thing in email design really is to reduce clutter or anything that isn't absolutely necessary to get the point across - Rule of thumb: Aim to create as clean a design as possible, and you will likely enhance the user experience. The fact that mobile email has taken over desktop just backs up the need to keep a single column layout, simple, large CTA's and headlines, legible fonts, high contrast etc.

 What remains your biggest hurdle when it comes to email marketing?

 Not having cut and dry standards to follow. Something may work for one browser or email client but then looks like complete shit and breaks on another. That and balancing client expectations vs. an achievable layout

The email clients still don't have standards across the board (looks at Outlook). Even with those build tools, it can still be a major pain

 A lot of times, a client wants to see some super pretty, custom extension of their brand through an email newsletter (patterns, photography, overlapping elements, custom fonts, etc.), but you have to limit those expectations in an email if they want the thing to actually render for their audience

For me, it would be a lack of emphasis on two things; 1. audience creation/management and 2. lack of a priority on content

First, too often email lists/audiences are sparse. Sometimes you're lucky to get more than just a single column .csv of email addresses. Other times the list is a mess and formatted incorrectly. Lastly, developing a good email audience takes time and effort. You need to first give them a good reason to subscribe. Sometimes it can be simple, like offering a discount for submitting your email address or to access additional content like white papers or case studies. But you also have to give your subscribers a reason to stay, which leads me to my second point.

Second, content is still king for email (and so many other digital tactics). If your email content is just recycled from elsewhere or you don't have something worthwhile to say, it will be ignored in your recipient’s inbox, or worse, they'll unsubscribe. A strong content strategy is key to keeping an audience engaged.

I think it's interesting that both of you all referenced the discrepancy in how an email can render depending on the email client. It leads nicely into my next question...

What do you think could help make email an even better platform for marketers? (I think I know what you all are going to say, lol)

Vague - Being more flexible. Specific - Let me use more fonts!

If we could move on from tables and the current lack of standards and limits

Also, if as an industry, we take a step back and make sure we don't bloat emails with too much media

@nick "Also if as an industry we take a step back and make sure we don't bloat emails with too much media" this is a good point, especially considering how many emails are now opened on cellular networks rather than Wi-Fi

It's truly frustrating having to pick between like 8 fonts if you want them to render correctly and not eff up the design for all of your audience

Well... 8 that are absolutely considered bulletproof

You have the web safe fonts, some clients don't support @font-face

Interesting, I was unaware of how limited font options were for email!

Are there any recent trends that you have seen that get you excited or make you curious about the future of email?

People moving away from older versions of Outlook and moving more towards web clients, which tend to not have as worse issues or get updated more frequently

@nick I think the further adoption Google Workspace will help with your point about older versions of Outlook. This article seems to agree with you too: 

https://blogs.gartner.com/craig-roth/2021/07/30/should-microsoft-office-365-be-afraid-of-google-workspace-gartner-2020-market-share-report-says/

I have seen a lot more layering in emails recently. Not quite sure how it's being accomplished, but it does make me want to play around and find out what all is possible

For a wannabe novice designer like myself, what do you mean by "layering in emails" @morgan?

So not fully animated effects but I've seen a lot of overlaping animations with other, static images.

Yea I've seen a lot of animated effects lately. At least alot of clothing (shoes) related emails

Interesting! I'll have to pay closer attention now that I know that's a thing lol

But I'd love to dig into more animation in email to figure out what is possible and how without it breaking on half of browsers or platforms

For me the trend that excited me most is the idea of real time marketing, but email doesn't feel like it's necessarily a real time platform. If you need to get a message out and a quick response, SMS marketing feels like the better route to go.

Do you all believe email will become a bigger or smaller part of the marketing landscape in the future?

 I think it will become bigger, its like how podcasts and other mediums that were on a downswing and are now coming back up because of how simple they are (Compared to an app or something)

That's a fair point @nick, or how the pandemic brought the QR code back into our lives in such a big way. Perhaps it should be looked at as being more cyclical in nature.



Personally, I feel like it will likely shrink some but not much. As I noted, it’s not the most immediately actionable tactic compared to SMS or push notifications from apps, which will be better for smaller items like apparel or media. However, it is great for higher-priced goods and services that users need more lead time on, like say hiring an account or financial planner or purchasing a car or furniture.

100% personalized to you based on where you go and what you do, driven by AI. More of a result of your behaviors, history, preferences, and interests. Not just generic blasts of content to the masses

It ain't going anywhere, I just think there will be less limitations and more customization

Okay, my last question is a two-parter... What is your 

 prediction about the future of email marketing AND what is your 

 predication for the future of email marketing?

I think it'll be more of the same. From a dev perspective, we are still held back by legacy clients, and it’s a lot harder to cut those out than cutting out something like IE11. More usage, but more of the same.

Bold prediction is either Google or Apple introduces some feature breaking change which forces everyone forward, some sorta new medium for email that everyone jumps on.

Realistic - hopefully fewer limitations on design/dev and a better perception of what recipients want/need from marketing emails. Less recycling content from elsewhere to re-purpose for email and more thoughtful consideration on when/how users view email content.

Bold - would be more dynamic emails that can change content even after they've been sent to reflect activities users might have completed or undertaken since it was initially sent. Something like an API that can connect to a CRM that ensures email content/promos/whatever is reflective of where that user is in the customer journey.

Hosted emails, that would be nice - the actual email is just an iframe to content that lives on a website with the option of it being cached by the email server (so if its not dynamic and can live in history)

Realistic - More customization options, fewer restrictions, more personalizations, and integrations.

Bold - Outlook and Internet Explorer become illegal to possess on all computer operating systems.

Alright, we are out of time. Thank you guys for your skills, thoughtfulness, and writing as part of this series!

View All Entries in the Email @ 50 Series:

Part I: Email @ 50: Email Marketing Still Works... Half a Century Later

Part II: Email @ 50: The Art of Email Design

Email

Marketing Strategy

Web Design

Frontend Development

Email @ 50: Retrospective + The Future of Email

Dynamic display ads are the recommended way to run display campaigns on Google Ads and the Google Display Network. Dynamic ads with animations and motion graphics are more likely to catch a user’s attention and result in a click.

However, not all campaigns have the budget or time to create a full suite of HTML5 display ads recommended by Google Ads. Rather than using static image ads, .gif display ads can offer a nice balance between production cost and end results.

The Problem: Google Was Rejecting Our .gif Display Ads

The Google Ads platform is picky about which .gif assets it allows to be uploaded for use. Even worse, in our experience, we kept receiving the same error message that didn't even correctly identify the problem with the assets we were trying to upload. “We've detected strobing or Flashing effects. Make sure the frame rate of your ad is less than 5 FPS for GIFs. 

" kept popping up, despite our .gif display ads being below 5 FPS. So, what do you do?

In our experience, the answer lies within specifically, how you are exporting the animation from After Effects into a .mov file and then, what method you are using for compression and how you are converting that compressed file into a .gif. Previously, we created .gif display assets as a video file exported from 

 at 4fps, then converted that .mov into a compressed, web optimized .mp4 using 

's free video compression tool and lastly, to a .gif using Photoshop’s import “video frame to layers” feature, or 

free video to .gif conversion platform. It's a process, but one that met the picky standards of Google. Until it didn't. 

Assets produced this way were being denied by Google Ads and causing frustration. We had to figure out why. It took some trial and error, but the solution to this issue is relatively simple. Once you know it.


The Solution: Export .gif Ads as PNG Sequences from After Effects

The solution that we found to make Google Ads accept our .gif ad assets was instead of exporting them from After Effects as a .mov and converting that .mov file to a .gif file; we exported as a "png sequence" for each ad. Essentially a series of images/frames rather than a movie. This allowed us to have full control over the mysterious frame rate issue and the png images/frames rendered higher quality as a frame by frame animation rather than a .mov file, converted to an animated .gif. We then used the png sequence and brought the series of images into Photoshop to create the .gif files for use in Google Ads. A step by step breakdown of this process:

Create your dynamic animation for the display ads in After Effects

Export your dynamic display ads as a .png sequence from After Effects

Import your series of images into your Timeline in Photoshop as “frames”

Customize your frame rate, timing and tweening 

Export for web from Photoshop as a looping .gif

A few parameters that Google Ads has in regards to these ads that you should keep in mind include:

The simpler the animation, the easier this is to meet

Animation length must be 30 seconds or shorter - 

Recommend a short, looping animation. You don't have a users attention for long with display ads. Make the movement more ambient rather than necessary to the message  

Animations can be looped, but the animations must stop after 30 seconds

Animated GIF ads must be slower than 5 FPS - 

Make sure you set your frame rate in step 1 - Go to After Effects > Compositions Settings > Frame Rate to adjust

Full Display Ads Specifications from Google

So there you have it, use this process to create .gif display ads accepted by Google Ads. There are other ways to do it, but we've found this process to provide the best quality, the most control and the best chance to meet the 150kb max file size requirement.

Remember, if your budget or production timeline is tight, .gif display ads are the perfect solution for your next campaign. Good luck!

Graphic Design

Marketing Campaigns

How To Upload .gif Display Ads to Google Ads

Advertising

Jack O'Lantern Spectacular + Winter Woods Spectacular

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Louisville Public Media

Researching and planning is key to effective marketing strategy. We use data, insights, our gained knowledge and research born from curiosity to plan inventive, value-drive marketing plans for our clients.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy: Case Studies

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Jack O'Lantern Spectacular + Winter Woods Spectacular

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Louisville Public Media

Marketing Strategy: Blog Posts

Email @ 50: Retrospective + The Future of Email

How To Upload .gif Display Ads to Google Ads