Using Animated GIFs

What is an Animated GIF?

A GIF file is made up of a sequence of images shown in rapid succession, creating the illusion of motion, which makes it inherently animated. These animations can range from scenes extracted from videos to slideshow-style presentations featuring multiple still images.

Incorporating an animated GIF into your email adds a dynamic element that static designs often lack. The movement can capture readers' attention, spark their curiosity, and encourage them to click through to your landing page. Additionally, animated GIFs are highly effective for visually conveying complex concepts, making information more engaging and easier to understand.

 

Best practices when using GIFs

Always include alt text

Since GIFs are image files, it's important to include descriptive alternative text for users who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers. Images can be inaccessible to many users, so providing clear copy and context ensures they can fully understand your message. The alt text should briefly describe the content of the GIF, offering essential context for those who cannot view it

Don't overuse GIFs

If overused, animated GIFs can lead to subscriber fatigue, causing many recipients to overlook them. However, when used sparingly, these GIFs can surprise, delight, and captivate your audience. Striking the right balance is key; too many GIFs may diminish their impact and decrease engagement with your campaigns.

Limit GIF size to 5 MB

Because animated GIFs consist of multiple images, they can easily become large files. In today’s mobile-centric world, file size is crucial for any email program. Extremely large GIFs can consume subscribers’ data plans and may load slowly, leading to frustrations that your audience shouldn’t have to face. To address this, animated GIFs are capped at 5MB in the LiveImage setup wizard.

Keep the visually impaired in mind

Animated GIFs can pose a problem in terms of accessibility for a variety of reasons. Content flashing rates between 2 Hz and 55 Hz can harm users with photosensitive epilepsy. In addition, users who are visually impaired may have difficulty reading or reviewing the content on a GIF before the animation changes. So ensure your animated GIFs either have smooth transitions or don’t animate from one frame to the next at a high rate.

 

Using animated GIFs in Gmail

Keeping file size small

You may notice when creating an animated .GIF for LiveVideo or LiveSlides that you get a warning if your animated .GIF exceeds a certain size. Animations larger than 20MB do not render properly in the Gmail desktop or the Gmail App. To solve this problem for videos, we automatically create a Gmail-friendly version of your animation, or you can manually select a shorter animation duration. For Slides, you can edit your slideshow to lower the size of your animated .GIF:

  • Decrease the dimensions.
  • Reduce the number of images used.
  • Change the transition type to basic.

GIF files show different colors in Gmail

When Gmail caches an image on it’s proxy servers, it runs the images through a compressor which results in some GIFs changing colors. One of the colors that Gmail removes is white, which results in the GIF appearing in the email with a very faint green-tinged background. To fix this, we recommend using transparency for the white of the image and letting the background color show through.

 

Using animated GIFs with LiveImage

Animated GIFs are supported for regular LiveImages and personalized LiveImages.

There are 3 things to consider when using animated GIFs in the LiveImage wizard:

  • Personalization text overlaid on top of an animated GIF will be shown in every frame of the animation.
  • Animations larger than 20MB do not render properly in the Gmail desktop/web client or the Gmail App on iOS and Android devices.
  • MS Outlook will display the GIF version even if you request to have animations disabled for the account.

 

LiveTimer background image quality loss

Images uploaded to use as a background image on a LiveTimer element will be transformed into GIF format, losing some quality. (GIFs support up to 256 colors.)

If this is the case, we recommend that you slice your background image into smaller sections, and only use the part of the image where the LiveTimer element will be placed as the background. By doing this, you will be using a smaller image, with fewer colors, so the quality loss will not be noticeable.

 

Using animated GIFs in Outlook

Outlook Support for animated GIFs

Support for animated GIFs in Outlook is diverse. Outlook claim that only Outlook as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription offers full support for animated GIF files and in older versions Outlook 2007-2019 there is no support. Depending on the Outlook version, users may see the first frame of the animation as a static image.

If another frame or static image is preferred for Outlook, you can upload a different version of the LiveImage and use targeting rules to serve that image.

Animated GIFs for LiveSlides & LiveVideo using Outlook

LiveSlides and LiveVideo will serve a custom static image in Outlook by default, but if you wish to serve animations in this email client, you can reach out to support or your ADM so they can enable this functionality for your account.

However, if the functionality is enabled, please keep in mind that the animation will loop three times and then stop on the first frame. The first frame that the animation stops on will feature a play button overlay, and users can replay the animation by clicking on this play button.