Downsides to adding graphics to Outlook Email?

Clarifications

TR is redesigning our own e-mail products right now because most e-mail clients--particularly Outlook 2007--block images by default. Since most folks never chnage the default settings on their apps, most people won't be viewing the images, they'll just get the broken image icon and whatever alt text you specify. Generally, you'll be going to extra trouble just to make your e-mails uglier.

If you MUST have images, make sure they are right-justified, so that any text on the same line won't shift position when the image gets blocked. Also, be absolutely certain you specifiy alt-text, especially if you're throwing in a company logo instead of (not in addition to) the company name. Finally, remember that Outlook embeds images using HTML, and if the recipient's e-mail client is set to text-only or rich-text (which is the case with most phone-based e-mail clients, or set that way on some companies' desktops for security reasons), you're still wasting your time.

Bottom line, design your e-mails as if the images won't show up, because in most cases, they won't.

Remember not to make the images overly big as even if they are not displayed they are still downloaded. Not a major problem if all your customers are on some form of Broadband but if you are sending E-Mails to customers connecting to the Internet through a NB & Mobile Phone most will be unwilling to allow the extra time for the download. This may even cause you to loose customers but this depends on the business.

When Looking at designing anything I always try to look at the slowest connection Speed that is available and design for that.

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These images will be in each message copy in the sender's Sent Items folder. Compare the size of a text-only message, even in Rich Text, Word, or HTML formats, with the size of the same message plus your intended graphics. Unless the graphics are quite small, they may require more storage space than the message text. Now remember that these images will be in each and every message copy in every users' Sent Items folder. If you have a limit on your users' mailbox size, or if you have limited mail storage space, this could become a problem.