How to insert animation into email. How to insert and view animated GIFs in Outlook email? How to Insert Animation in an Email

In various instant messengers that we often use, we are accustomed to exchanging (replying to them in messages) GIF files with friends, while very accurately and quickly expressing our emotional state at a given time. Undoubtedly, many users would like to know how to insert a GIF into an email.

The new Gmail now allows us to do just that with one of its best features. Its handy sidebar will help.

If you have not yet switched to the new version of the popular email client, we advise you to do it as soon as possible. Soon all users will be automatically transferred to its permanent use.

It’s better to start testing right now and deal with the main functionality of the mail client, because then you still have to do it. Getting used to something new is always difficult, but in this case it is useful.

Now a host of additional tools add more useful functionality to Gmail. Some of them are ported from the old version of the client, some are added at the development stage and, over time, are tested, and then more and more new additions are introduced.

HOW TO INSERT A GIF INTO A MAIL

One such tool is “Gfycat: GIFs for Email”, which allows the recipient to quickly respond to any message with an animated GIF. Adding an addon to the interface is easy.

Click the “+” button on the sidebar, after which the branded “G Suite Marketplace” (an online store for web applications from Google) will launch. Use the search bar to find the above addon and install it.

In the future, you will see the “Gfycat” icon in the sidebar whenever you want to reply to an email you receive. Click on it, choose the GIF you like from the huge catalog of the service for creating, opening and sharing GIFs and short videos, and paste it into your answer.

Note that this only works for your answers. You can't use it in your new emails yet. Thank you for your attention!

Test the function and leave your feedback on our website in the form of comments. Also check out many other useful computer tips and instructions, a list of which is located in.

Reading time: 5 minutes

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a widely used format that displays well almost everywhere. More importantly, GIFs can be animated, and quickly changing multiple frames will give the illusion of movement.

In the early days of the internet, this was the most popular way to add interactivity to a website. Over time, it was supplanted by flash and css animations, but gif is still popular in the field of email design, because no other types of animation give a 100% guarantee of display on all clients (in fact, gif also does not give such a guarantee, but practice shows that on most clients everything is displayed correctly).

gif features

The format has several features besides animation support. For simplicity, let's break them down into pros and cons.

Minuses:

only supports 256 colors. Juicy and beautiful photos will lose some of their brightness if converted to gif format.
the resulting animation weight can be large. For example, if there are many frames or the file is large in size. For emails, this is critical, so most often you have to sacrifice quality for the sake of deliverability.

Pros:

supports transparent layer.
ideal for images with few colors.

How and where to use animation

Our attention is like a spotlight - we clearly see what interests us, and the rest we see as if blurry. An animated image inherently attracts a lot of attention, because the eye reacts to movement and the gaze immediately goes there.

See how a block with a discount was allocated in the befree store. Despite the fact that there is a title (which is larger and brighter than the animated block), the animation still captures attention for longer:

In addition to the function of focusing attention, gifs can be used for other purposes:

How to make a GIF

There are varying degrees of difficulty in GIFs. The top one is animation through Adobe After Effects or Adobe Animate. But to create a high-quality gif, you need to practice for more than one year. It will be easier to work with Adobe Photoshop - the program can convert video to a frame-by-frame sequence and it is possible to edit frames as you wish. An example of creating such an animation can be found.

Another type of animation is cinemagraphy (when one element in the picture moves, while the rest seem to freeze). And as an example - one of the Amediateka mailing lists:

Looks cool, you say? Cinemagraphy always looks interesting and unusual, but again you need Photoshop and knowledge of its tools. You can see the creation tutorial.

Well, the easiest way that does not require certain skills is to use online services. For example, gifmaker.me or gifius.ru. Upload a sequence of frames (photos) there, set the required speed and size, and get the animation at the output.

What problems may arise

There are email clients that do not support animation: Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013. They will show the first frame instead. Therefore, make sure that the first frame of your GIF is informative. Look in the campaign statistics from which email clients your newsletters are read - this way you will better understand your audience and make your emails more adaptive.

If you use too many animations, then subscribers will simply stop paying attention to them or even lose confidence in you, because the letter will resemble a bazaar, where they are trying to sell something from every corner and get at least a little attention.

Always keep an eye on the weight of the GIF. If it is too large, then it is likely that the subscriber will not see it. Even if the spam filter misses it, the mail client can simply cut it out of the letter. In this case, put alt-text and a link to the web version.

An example of a newsletter that recently came to my mail. How it looks in the email client and how the email was actually intended. The mail client simply cut out a beautiful GIF, because it weighed 5Mb (!):

in my mailbox:

according to the creators:

It is worth remembering that if you set a gif as a background for a block, then it may not be displayed due to restrictions on the part of the mail client. Therefore, you can put a gif, but just in case, play it safe and also add color to the block so that you can read the text.

What is the result?

Use GIF animation in emails - they catch and hold attention and help to focus on the most important thing.
Watch the size of images, consider the limitations of email clients.
Use it wisely: don't make your email look like a solid animation.
Use alt text (the text that will be displayed instead of the image) and a link to the web version of the email.

Assuming that email recipients are likely to view email in an Internet browser, you can embed an animated GIF in an email for visual description or others. Here, this article will introduce ways to insert animated GIFs in Outlook emails and view animated GIFs in received emails in Outlook.

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Insert an animated GIF into an outgoing email in Outlook

In fact, you can insert an animated GIF just as easy as inserting any regular image into a composing email in Outlook.

1 . AT mail view, create a new email with a click home > New Email.

2 , In the new message window, place the cursor in the body of the message where the animated GIF will be inserted, and click Insert> Pictures See screenshot:

3 . In the Insert Picture dialog box that opens, locate and select the animated GIF you are inserting, and click Insert button. See screenshot:

Attention: The inserted animated GIF will be static in the multipart email.

4 , Compose an email and send it.

Attention: When recipients view email in browsers, the GIF image is animated; If recipients are viewing email in Outlook, they can view the animated GIF using the following methods.

View an animated GIF in a received email in Outlook

For example, you receive an email with an animated GIF in Outlook, you can view the GIF image as below:

1 . AT mail browse, open the mail folder containing the email with the animated GIF, and then double-click to open it.

2 , In the message box that opens, click Message > Actions > View in browser See screenshot:

3 , In the resulting Microsoft Outlook dialog box, click OK Button.

And now the content of the email is displayed in your browser and the GIF image is animated.

View animated Gif image in received email with Kutools for Outlook

If you have Kutools for Outlook installed, you can view an email with an animated GIF Advanced Printing function.

1 . AT mail browse, open the mail folder containing the email with the animated GIF, and then click to select the email.

2 . Click Kutools > Advanced Printing.

And now you can see the GIF image animate in the Preview area.

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Click Embed Video

Paste the video link and press Enter

After, select "Generate GIF".

You can convert part of the video by clicking "Part of video". Then add "Start Time" and "Duration" - up to 5 seconds.

If you want your subscribers to watch the full video, click "Add button overlay on image" and they will be redirected to the video page.

Also, you can add a duration to the animation.

Select the desired image width.

Another way to convert video to GIF is to use selected frames

Use Selected Frames

Select the desired frames and set the interval between them. You can also add a button overlay to the image and duration.

Choose a preview and create a GIF

Click Preview to see how the animation will look. Then click "Create GIF Image". Wait a few seconds and add the GIF to the template.

Your GIF animation is ready!

Have you ever received an email with a GIF animation? Were you intrigued by its content?

GIF has not yet become a trend in email marketing, but is steadily and confidently gaining momentum.

Why animation draws your attention?

You may have such associations: mystery, curiosity, quivering anticipation of something. And this is due to the purpose of using GIFs in email marketing.

Why you should use GIFs in email marketing

We often check email while doing other things, or when we have a free moment, such as on the way to work or during a break. At such a frantic pace, we are not inclined to read long texts and enjoy very informative emails. The first thing we pay attention to is the picture. Yes, it's definitely a picture. And if it’s also a well-chosen picture, then it can give an idea of the sender’s intent in a creative and exciting way.

Of course, there are more reasons why you should use GIF animation in your email campaigns, but the ones listed above are the main ones.

You already know why GIFs are so attractive, let's look at good examples of their use.

How to use GIF in different fields of activity

In different fields of activity, GIF can be applied in different ways, but there is something in common.

Client's birthday

Wanderlust + Co sent this animation in an email to subscribers who had a birthday. It's bright and pretty, plus there's a prominent call to action, which means they have a birthday special.

Special offers

This letter is from Rozetka. They inform customers about discounts by mentioning the famous animated series The Simpsons.

New collections

Fred Perry sent this GIF email to their subscribers to let them know when new things are coming. They managed to demonstrate their goods well “live”.

Education

Teavana use animation to showcase how their product works, offer a discount, and have 2 prominent calls to action. The same can be applied to software, gadgets, instructions for using various online resources.

Event

GIF is a wonderful way to invite subscribers to a party, concert, festival. You can convey the atmosphere of fun with animation, as in the example below.

Present

Do you want to intrigue, surprise and delight your subscribers? Such a gift box is better than any call to action.

How to properly use GIFs in newsletters

Don't use animation in every newsletter, otherwise it will become just a routine for your subscribers. Use it once a month for variety, for example.
Don't use a lot of GIFs in one email, otherwise they will not only distract the attention of customers from your message, but also significantly affect the overall size of the email. If it is too large, the subscriber's email client will not support it.
Make the first frame the most informative and interesting. If your subscriber's email client does not support GIF animation, only the first slide will be displayed.
Avoid bright flashing frames and do not make the interval between them too short, otherwise it will cause irritation and reduce the information content of the animation.

Now you know how to use GIF correctly and what to avoid. Be creative and try applying animation right now!

displays not (3)

Microsoft considers .gif images to be active content, and for security reasons, Outlook does not allow active content to work in messages.

All versions of Outlook after 2007
There is no support for animated gifs when composing or reading email. If you want to see the animation, you will need to open the message in a browser.
To do this, double-click the message to open it in your window. Then select (Other) Actions-> View in the browser. This will open the message in Internet Explorer.
Note. Even though the gif file will not be displayed when composing, when the recipient receives your message in an email client that supports gif animation, the gif animation will still work.

So this tells Outlook to show the first frame of the .gif image. If you add the .gif using email in Outlook, and send the email to a device that can display the .gif , say an iPhone, the .gif will be animated there.

In versions of Outlook prior to 2007, they have limited support. This is because in 2007 Microsoft switched from using Internet Explorer (which can render .gif) to render email in Microsoft Word (which blocks .gif).

Because of this change, Outlook does not support many of the latest HTML5 standards, including HTML5 animations. So there is currently no way for Outlook (at least for desktop) to show any type of animation.