What Is Email Alt Text (and Why Is It Important)?


What Is Email Alt Text (and Why Is It Important)? - 1
February 29, 2024
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Grant Olsen
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What Is Email Alt Text (and Why Is It Important)?

What is email alt text, and how does it improve the user experience? Get all the details in this guide.

Email alt text can be a game-changer for accessibility (and backup plans), yet it doesn’t get the love and attention it deserves. 

We’ve all been in marketing situations where our team was thoroughly prepared, the content was expertly crafted, and the launch seemed as smooth as can be, yet unforeseen snags still caused issues. Perhaps a file error prevents your ad from running on Spotify, or your time-sensitive billboard is destroyed in a windstorm, or the CTA link for your display ads is somehow broken.

You simply can’t plan on anything except the unexpected in these situations, which is why it’s important to have contingency plans. It’s the same reason why planners for outdoor events always have a secondary indoor venue lined up in case of bad weather.

Email alt text (also known by its full name of alternative text) is an example of this kind of strategy. Thanks to the backup support it provides, you can deliver a better user experience when things don’t go according to plan.

Why is email alt text important? And what exactly is it?

Alt text is text that accompanies email images and is displayed when the image doesn’t show up. Alt text has become a standard practice because some email providers block images by default. Other times, it’s the individual users who opt to block them. For example, Gmail offers the option to have images blocked unless you choose to override the block within certain emails.

Even when an email provider or user hasn’t intentionally blocked the images within your email, it’s always possible that broken links, bad connections, and other modern scourges will prevent your images from displaying correctly.

In these situations, there’s truth in the old adage that “something is better than nothing.” For example, let’s say that you are a member of P.F. Chang’s loyalty club. Because you’re addicted to the restaurant’s Great Wall of Chocolate cake, you’re always watching for special promotions in your inbox.

On Monday morning, you receive a message promoting a special four-course Valentine’s Day meal for two. Here’s how the email looked when the restaurant’s creative team finished it:

That’s definitely a solid marketing email. It has a strong message that will likely appeal to loyalty members like yourself, as well as a clear call to action. But due to issues with your email provider, this is how it looks when you open the message:

Yikes. 

What happened to the photo of the happy couple sharing a four-course meal? And where did the nice typography and layout go? 

There’s no doubt that this image-free email is less pleasant to look at than the original… but you’ll also notice that alt text helps ensure that the critical information is still delivered. There’s a description of the photo (“Image of two people on a date”), as well as text that repeats the copy that was part of a larger image in the original email.

Email alt text is essential for digital accessibility

There is another important audience that relies on alt text on a regular basis and deserves your consideration when programming your emails: individuals who are visually impaired. The inclusive practice of ensuring digital accessibility means that you eliminate any obstacles that might prevent people with disability from accessing your website and content.

Visually impaired people typically use screen reader software to tell them what is displayed on a website or within an email. But screen readers rely on information such as alt text to describe images, meaning an email without alt text leaves a void in the user experience. Your message won’t be delivered and the recipient won’t feel like a valued customer.

From this perspective, including alt text is essential to delivering emails that reach your entire audience. Ensuring accessibility is simply a kind thing to do, but it also improves the performance of your marketing campaigns by broadening the opportunities for people to engage with your brand.

Ultimately, using alt text can also save your company a lot of money. Why? Because failing to make your web content accessible to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines can expose your company to possible lawsuits.

Alt text email best practices

Now that you have a better idea about what email alt text and why it’s an essential part of your email marketing, let’s look at six ways that you can maximize its usage. These tips cover everything from what to say in your alt text to how to ensure that you don’t double down on a deliverability issue by having alt text that doesn’t even display correctly.

1. Stick to the point

Your primary goal with email alt text is to deliver a succinct description of the images within your email. It should only take you one or two sentences to accomplish this.

Making the text too long introduces a couple of risks. First, you might bore (or even annoy) the reader with an overly verbose block of alt text. Second, some email providers won’t even display text over a certain character count. There are few things less professional looking than a non-displaying image that’s been replaced by an incomplete string of words that has been truncated by an email provider.

As a rule of thumb, don’t exceed 125 characters. This ensures that your description is concise and email providers and screen readers won’t cut it off before it’s finished.

2. Consider the context

It’s also important to use the email alt text to elevate your overall message. If it’s a headline in a general image, you could use that headline as the alt text because it’s already important to the overall flow of your message. If the image is more specific and lacks a headline, such as a family relaxing on a beach, your alt text could be something descriptive such as “A family spends time together on a sunny beach.”

By keeping the entire flow of the email in mind, you’ll avoid alt text that feels disjointed or confusing.

3. Don’t simply repeat your captions

If your email images have captions, never copy and paste those captions into the alt text. The reason is that screen reading software will detect both the caption and the alt text, then share it with visually impaired readers. If those two pieces of content are identical, users will be treated to an email that is as redundant as it is unengaging.

4. Don’t forget the punctuation

While many people consider punctuation optional in text messages, it’s essential in email alt text because when it displays without punctuation, the words run into each other and only add to the sense of sloppiness that occurs when an image doesn’t display.

And for the visually impaired, punctuation within alt text helps their screen reader make sense of the words and insert pauses and emphasis in the correct places. The end result is a clearer, more accurate message.

One thing to note is that while commas and periods are welcome in alt text, don’t include quotation marks. The reason for this is that email alt text goes into the HTML of an email, which already includes quotation marks as part of its coding language. Adding additional quotation marks can cause confusion that makes the alt text not display properly.

5. Add a little flair

The standard fonts for email alt text look bland by nature and you can add some brand styling with CSS. By choosing the font styles, font sizes, and colors that most match your unique brand, you’ll ensure there are no wasted opportunities within your messages.

6. Test before you send

Now that you’ve taken the time to create relevant alt text that showcases your brand, it’s important to make sure that recipients will see it in all its glory. A testing platform allows you to see how the alt text will appear to those with blocked images or for a screen reader.

Your first objective is to make sure the styling you’ve incorporated will display properly with various email providers. Next, pay attention to the precise wording and look for opportunities to refine. If you need to add a couple of words for clarity, go ahead and do it (unless it exceeds 125 characters). If you feel it’s stronger with a few words removed, even better.

Improve your overall email strategies and results with Twilio SendGrid

With Twilio SendGrid’s email builder, it’s easier than ever to choose your alt text and make sure that it displays in the best way for recipients. You’ll also get advanced tools that help you with the design, composition, sending, and tracking of your email campaigns. It’s like having a whole team of experts within one user-friendly platform.

Ready to see what Twilio SendGrid can do for your email strategies? Sign up today for a free trial and you’ll get immediate access to our platform. And if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our email specialists.


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