How to choose persuasive images for your emails?

Did you know that there is a method to scientifically choose super-persuasive images to include in your emails? Today we'll explain what it is and how to create the perfect visual to maximize the performance of your email campaigns.

In online promotion it is essential to know how to attract attention and consequently persuade people to take the action of responding to us. This is even more evident in Email Marketing, especially when it is aimed at generating profiled contacts, where the competition on receiving and attracting attention in the inbox is increasingly fierce.

Therefore, use a scientific (ie replicable) method to be able to capture the attention of your potential audience and start it on the purchase decision-making process.

Studying design, color and images on a theoretical level and carrying out continuous and various field tests is essential to consolidate a functional procedure and method which , regardless of who implements it, always leads to obtaining a professional and profitable result.

The 3 basic systems for communicating

We humans have three tools that we use to exchange ideas with other people :

1. writing . Writing the words, having them delivered to the person and having them read allows for communication (just what we are doing now). It is certainly a sophisticated level, because it requires knowledge of an alphabet, the ability to write concepts using that symbology and the ability to read and interpret those terms in order to be able to duplicate them
2. word . Communicating through the voice by expressing concepts that are understandable to another person is something we usually do, we take it for granted but it is certainly an advanced level of communicating. Just think of when we go abroad or meet someone who does not speak our language: in those moments communication through words is less familiar
3. gestures . A very simple way to communicate are gestures and facial expressions. For example, we can understand a message of antagonism even just from the expression and posture of the person in front of us and this makes gestures a very immediate, albeit primitive, tool.

Now the question arises: which of these 3 systems communicates simply and directly to our mind?

If you answered gestures, you were right! And gestures mean what we observe, therefore the IMAGES.

Having made this indispensable premise to fully understand the importance of images in our lives and, therefore, also in promotion, let's understand what are the fundamental rules for scientifically choosing super-persuasive images.

1. Clearly define the message you want to communicate

To choose a communicative image we must first establish what message we want to convey to the viewer : an image must have only one message, it cannot have others and it must be unequivocal (or at least misunderstood as possible).

Let's see an example:

This image immediately expresses one thing: freedom

Once we have clearly established the message we want to convey, we need to ensure that this communication reaches its destination and "convinces" the user to take a specific action.

The 3 key aspects of persuasive visual communication

To convince the user to perform an action, 3 essential rules of persuasive visual communication come to our rescue:

1. The temporal pattern of perception

This concept is based on two key factors , the first is that for us Westerners time flows from left to right, therefore we find the past on the left and the future on the right . The second is that things above are positive while things below are negative .

In this sense, if we put the passing of time on the horizontal axis on the left the past on the right the future and on the vertical axis the positive perception above and negative below, we can divide our image into 4 equal parts of which two areas become determinants. The upper right corner will be the positive projection area, while the lower left corner will be the negative recollection area.

An example of how this scheme works by analyzing two banner ads:

The first figure is a message completely addressed to the past: the emotional part (dictated by the use of images) is in fact all on the left, the characters have their gaze turned to the past and even the black and white color is a clear reference to the past. The most important area of positive projection is completely empty and untapped.

On the contrary, the second figure uses the left side not looking for any emotion, while the right side shows the message of positivity, a look towards the future and above all directed towards the call to action that the recipient of the message will have to make: an "X" on the election logo.

This is how the temporal pattern of perception works.

2. Aesthetics

It very often happens to come across people who believe that aesthetics is something subjective, that is, that thing is beautiful therefore it is aesthetic, that thing is ugly therefore it is not aesthetic. In reality what is liked is subjective while the concepts of aesthetics are purely mathematical and therefore super objective.

Let's see in detail what are these mathematical formulas that determine the aesthetics . The first is geometric symmetry, for which over the years art historians and philosophers have developed and determined precise rules and elements considered symmetrical (such as order, formal rigidity, stillness, simplicity) and asymmetrical (such as movement, freedom, chaos).

The second is the golden section (or rule of thirds), which represents a recurring expression in nature and which develops from the Fibonacci sequence , more commonly called the Spiral Spiral.

In photography it has been called the rule of thirds and is used to give the right balance and aesthetic aroma to the images, matching the main subject in correspondence with the third party, as in this example:

The third and final rule is definition and sharpness . Nobody likes grainy images, they are synonymous with amateurishness and lack of professionalism. So always use images with high sharpness: they will be very persuasive because they are very real and therefore exciting for those who observe them.

3. Identification

The winning key to excite our potential customer is to make him identify himself , to make sure that he experiences the emotion present in the image and therefore receives the message we want to communicate to him firsthand.

In this regard, there are 4 essential precautions to ensure that this happens :

1. Improvement mental projections : the subject of the image must be similar to our target audience of the message but at a higher level of status (wellness or vitality).

2. Appropriate clothing : the subject of our image must be dressed appropriately for the role he plays: a doctor must have a coat over a shirt with a tie, a chef must have the typical suit and a chef's hat, a house painter must have the overalls, etc.

3. Atmosphere : the subject must be surrounded by an environment and objects that are in line with his profession and with the message. If we were to go to a new dentist, we will certainly look at the cleanliness of the equipment and rooms before trusting us, in the same way it happens with an image

4. Action / Interaction : How does the subject interact with its surroundings? Is he doing something? Here is that type of activity if we have been good in the previous points it will serve to make those who are looking at our image experience the same emotion, therefore if the character is in relaxation he will experience relaxation, if the subject instead points to an object in the room the recipient of our message will be prompted to look at that object.

2. Be essential and use elements that reinforce the message

Therefore, eliminate all distractions that do not reinforce the message. This is because if you tend to abound and add the result is often something very confusing, which misses the mark. Once the superfluous has been removed, leaving only the necessary which strengthened the message, here we have our super persuasive image.