Do your images have style?  If not, why?  It’s simple in Bronto’s WYSIWYG editor to add styling to your images to give your message that professional feel.  In today’s post, we’ll look at the styling tools we offer and see how to use them to fix a couple of common problems.

A Look at the Image Appearance tab

In order to see what styles you can apply to your images, you’ll need to go to the normal Insert/Edit Image button () in the Bronto WYSIWYG editor. Clicking this button will bring up the standard image inserting dialogue box. If you take a look at this, you’ll notice two tabs at the top, one of which is labeled Appearance.

After clicking on the Appearance tab, you’ll see the editor window below:

Now that we have the Appearance tab pulled up, we’ll walk through what each of the settings does…

The Alignment Setting

The Alignment setting allows you to align your image. You can choose from a number of different alignment options, including the two most commonly used, left and right.  Aligning an image left will cause text to wrap around the image on the right side, and aligning an image right will cause the text to wrap around on the left.  Like the graphic below.

Dimensions

The Dimensions setting allows you to set the size of your image. It will let you define a width and a height for the image you are styling. It also includes a checkbox that will, if checked, keep the image proportions intact so that your image does not distort when it re-sizes.

Vertical and Horizontal space

The Vertical and Horizontal space boxes are great for allowing your images a little breathing room.  If you look back at the alignment example above, you’ll notice that the images and the text are really close together.  If we take the same left aligned image and put a value of 10 in both the vertical and horizontal space boxes, an invisible buffer of 10 pixels in either direction will surround the image. The result will be much nicer, like so:

Border

The Border property allows you to set a border around your image. The border will be solid with a thickness set to whatever number you type into the box. This is not the most useful aspect of the Border property though. Oddly enough, the vast majority of users will set the Border attribute to 0.  Setting it to 0 will eliminate the ugly blue border that appears around images when you place a link on them. This blue border can be quite the eyesore in an otherwise beautiful email marketing message, so it really pays to get rid of it with this simple setting.

Style

The Style box is kind of a catch all that allows you to apply custom styling to your images using CSS. Using this box will require knowledge of CSS syntax and attributes.

So that is our quick and easy look at the image styling options available in the Bronto WYSIWYG editor. The different styles offered here can really help to lend a professional look and feel to your WYSIWYG generated messages, and can hopefully increase your ROI in the process.

Lucas Weber,
Bronto Client Services

Related posts:

1. Setting The WYSIWYG Editor To Basic Mode Bronto’s WYSIWYG editor is a fantastic way to create and...
2. Adding Blocks Of Re-Editable Dynamic Content In the past, the only way for you to edit...
3. Dynamically Adding Values To Conversion Tracking URLs In recent weeks, I have been getting a lot of...

There is nothing worse than being excited about doing something and having those plans fall through for some reason or another, especially with little or no notice. This happened to me personally while booking a flight recently. I was half way through the process (choosing my seats actually) and with my next click, I was taken back to the start of my search. The itinerary I was booking was sold out. Luckily, I was able to start again and get a similar flight, but it did change my perception of the airline a bit and made me consider using someone else.

Having a subscriber who would like to participate in your offer is great, but if they open your message a day too late they may see the offer and click through only to find that the product is sold out, or the event is full. This can have a very negative effect on your subscribers, and lessen the trustworthiness of your brand in their eyes.

If you send out time sensitive emails, offers that expire, or marketing messages centered on items with limited quantities, it is important to keep these messages working even after the deadline has passed. I’ve compiled a few simple tips to help keep your messages fresh and relevant.

Tip #1: The old Switch-a-Roo

Here is a quick way to make sure that your subscribers are seeing the most up to date information on time or inventory sensitive messages. If you are using an image to show your product or offer, consider creating two versions of the image. One with the image of the product and another that shows the product as sold out and calls them to click for other great deals.

This is simple to do, and will let subscribers that are late to opening your messages know right away that the product is no longer available. All that is required is replacing the original image with the new one, as long as they have the same file name, new openers will see the new image.

Unfortunately, this will probably not be a good indicator of availability to clients who have already opened the message and waited to purchase, as most email clients store these images in a local cache so they do not have to be downloaded again. These subscribers will see the image that was there when the message was opened initially.

Tip #2: Change up your landing page

If the call to action in your message leads to a landing page or direct purchase page, it is a good idea to keep these relevant as well. Instead of sending your subscribers to a purchase page with only a sold out item, send them to a page that gives them suggestions on other items or offers that they may be interested in.

While your subscribers may be disappointed to see the offer they wanted has expired or sold out, providing them with other options will keep them engaged and wanting to see what comes next.

Tip #3: Keep them in the loop

Let your subscribers know what is coming, keep them informed of upcoming specials and offers that are of interest to them. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways of keeping time sensitive messages fresh – let people know they are coming before they come. This will encourage your subscribers to watch for your upcoming emails and keep them ready to jump on the offers that you are sending.

So there you have it, a few simple, very effective tips for keeping your time-limited messages fresh, relevant and effective. If you have any other tips and tricks that you’ve successfully implemented, please share them in the comments.

Lucas Weber
Support Associate at Bronto

No related posts.