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Images in emails

Learn how to work with images in email messages

Marcus Warren avatar
Written by Marcus Warren
Updated over a week ago

You can use two types of images in your emails:

  1. Images where text is not wrapping around them. These images use a dedicated image content block and they are dragged into your message from the sidebar of the editor.

  2. Images with text wrapping around them. These images are in-line images and they are added from the editor toolbar (the same place where you add links and update text formatting)

Images where text is not wrapping around them.

Images that are added in stand-alone, dedicated image blocks should be used in all cases except when you're adding a small image and want text to wrap around it.

You can add these images by dragging the image element from the sidebar into the message. (see screenshot above)

Alignment of these images where text is not wrapping around them can be controlled using the Align setting from the image settings page. The Align setting is only shown if the image is narrower than the full width of the block in which the image is placed because for full width images alignment is not a relevant setting.

Images with text wrapping around them

This is used if you have a small image and you want text to wrap around this image. Click the image icon from the content editor toolbar to add a new in-line image.

Then, use the "Alignment" setting in the "image properties" to control text wrapping. An image that is left aligned will have text wrapping to the right and under the image. You can also use HSpace and VSpace to add some padding between the image and the text. HSpace stands for Horizontal Space and VSpace stands for Vertical Space.

There are two different alignment settings for these small images. The image alignment shown in the screen capture above on the image properties window controls whether or not small images have text wrapping around them. To centre align small images you need to change the paragraph alignment in which the image is added. Use the alignment options from the formatting toolbar to left, centre or right align the paragraph and in turn the image inside the paragraph.


Resize, crop and rotate images

You can edit images you uploaded to the image library. Click the Edit button from the image library to crop, rotate and adjust other properties of images.


Images on mobile devices

Images in single and two column layouts automatically stretch to full width on mobile devices for an optimal mobile experience. Images in three column layouts and small images such as logos or social media icons will be displayed as-is (won't stretch to full width).

In technical terms images 270px and wider are shown full-width on mobile screens.

Here is an example to illustrate this in a sample message:


Animated GIFs or other animations

You can add animated GIFs to emails the same way you would add non-animated images: just upload the image. These animated GIFs work in most email clients. Of the ones that don't support it the first frame will be shown and the image will remain static.

Related article: Videos in emails.


Width and height of images

When an image is added to emails it will be automatically resized to fit the container it's added to. This resizing takes into consideration padding around the images. For example if your container is 660px wide and you apply a 30px padding on the left and right sides, the image in this container will be displayed as 600px wide. This works well in all cases of desktop and web based email clients.

There is a maximum of 1200px height restriction for each image, any image taller than 1200px will be automatically downsized.


Alternative text for images

We recommend you always add an Alternative Text for images as it has many benefits:

  • the Alternative Text is more meaningful in reports than the image file link (URL)

  • the Alternative Text is shown if images cannot be loaded for someone reason

  • the Alternative Text is used by screen readers for accessibility


Background images

Background images are a good option when you need to overlay text on top of an image. Keep in mind, however, that they don't work in every email program so a fallback background colour should always be used. Read more about background images here.


Images appear squished

If at some point an image was missing or broken in your email, a 60px height is added automatically so the broken image shows up so it can be corrected - otherwise a broken image would be invisible. Now that the image is not broken anymore the 60px height needs to be reset by opening the image editor and re-saving the image.


Images broken / not appearing

If an image doesn't show up as expected it may have been deleted from your image library or moved to another folder, which in turn breaks the image link because folder names are part of links. If this case you need to re-upload images to the folder they are linked from.

Another reason an image may not show up is due to internal blocking by a security software, firewall or VPN setting. A good way to rule out internal vs external display issues is to load the image from an external / public network such as a mobile phone using a cell network (not the office wi-fi). If the image shows up on the public network but not from your office then you should reach out to your IT team.

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