EP. 14- ANIMATED GIFs In Email!! C’mon! Do it. w/ Pierce Ujjainwalla from Knak l Expert Quick Tips

Foreign. Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. Okay, I'm excited.

I'm not kidding. You know, sometimes you do these podcasts, you invite people on that you just sort of know whatever.

But I have an actual real life friend here who's also just one of the coolest dudes in the industry. Okay, so Pierce Eugene Walla is here. How did I do with the last name?

You nailed it, man. You nailed it. We're besties. We got to be able to say each other's last names.

This is true. And honestly, I'm gonna tell you the secret. I didn't tell you this.

The only reason I invited you on the podcast is I wanted to find somebody whose last name was harder to say than mine. And that's it. That's the only reason you're actually here.

How old were you when you could say, spell your name? Because I was like grade three, I think.

Oh, that's embarrassing. No, I mean, I was able to do it from birth. No, I'm kidding. I'm a genius. So let me tell everybo Pierce is.

Besides for having an amazingly long last name, Pierce is the co founder and CEO of a this email design platform called Knack K n a k nak.com and it happens to be a platform that my company uses to design our emails because it is awesome. So I asked Pierce to come on here because this dude knows about email design and what works, what doesn't work.

So we're going to rip through something in email email design that's going to change your engagement. You are going to get a lot more people clicking because of what we talk about today.

And we're going to do a myth busting too, and then we'll get into some chaos. So. So, Pierce, you game for all that?

I live for chaos.

That's your middle name, by the way. Pierce is from Canada. And anybody listening? Canada. If I make any fun of anything related to Canada, I apologize. It's definitely going to happen.

So we gotta drop some A's on here.

Oh, yeah, some A's. I'll talk about Jim Carrey and any other people I can think of from Canada. All right, so I get this question all the time.

And I want to know if you get this question. Here's the question. Whether it's from a consumer marketer or a business marketer. Hey, Jay, can I put a video in my email? Do you get that question.

Literally every day? This is probably the question that every marketer wants to know. I, I would like to know where did people see these videos in the emails?

Because I, I, I don't know where this comes from. But you know, everyone asks it for sure.

So can you just dispel the myth? Can you put a video in an email?

Yeah. So like with anything in email, there's a lot of complexity. It depends on the client. I'm not going to get into all that.

Generally speaking, no, you cannot put a video in an email. And also like, who wants audio just playing when they open an email? Right?

Like we all went through that phase of websites when there's just random sounds happening and the first thing you want to do is turn it off.

So, so no, you can't put video into an email, but we are going to share a little bit more about how you could do something like a video that's even better than video.

Okay, this is great. And this is if you're a consumer marketer or if you're a business marketer, this is for every marketer.

There is something you could do in email that is just not being taken advantage of enough. So I'm going to lay up the stat and then I'm going to, I want Pierce to go deep on what we're talking about here. Animated gifs.

And Pierce can explain how to do them and what they are. Animated gifs in emails. Okay.

When you use them as part of your design for business and consumer marketers, we see over a 20% increase in click through rate when using animated GIFs. So Pierce, what does that mean? How do you do it? What's it all about?

An animated GIF is basically a sequence of images that makes it look like a video. So as we already said, you can embed a video in an email, but you can embed an animated gif. And so I'm sure everyone's seen this.

There's a million GIFs on the Internet. A lot of them are hilarious. You know, Jay, I'd like to know what your favorite one is, but mine usually includes some kind of fail. That's my jam.

But yeah, you can put this in an email. And marketers are doing that. You know, it's something different. We always, I encourage our clients to do things to stand out and email these days.

And animated gifs are a great way to grab people's attention. Now, you want to be careful. Like, some people go overboard on these gifts and then, you know, you're like giving people seizures or something.

But, you know, you want to be subtle with your gifts. That's my top tip on the gifts.

So let me ask you a thing that relates to that, because I'll work with a marketer and they'll be like, well, you know, we're trying to get people to download this industry report, and what are we going to do? You make the industry report dance around the screen like something ridiculous. Is it worthwhile to animate something small or subtle or a logo?

Or should you only be using animated GIFs if you're like a movie studio promoting a movie? Like, is this for everybody?

I think everyone can use animated GIFs. It really depends on your brand, right?

Like, yeah, movie studio might have a much more elaborate in your face gif of maybe some scene from the movie or like an action shot. Like, yeah, that probably doesn't work for a B2B brand, but for B2B being more subtle, you know, like, there's some awesome examples.

Even when you have like a screenshot of the book or a screenshot of your product, like, having some minimal movement that's happening really captures people's attention. You're always looking as a marketer, how do you surprise and delight your audience? I think animated gifs are a great way to do that.

And, you know, I would encourage everybody. I know some of you may tune this out, like, oh, we're not going to do that.

Our brand, you know, we're in a regulated industry or we're a very, you know, very stuffy brand. We can't do that. What Pierce is talking about is you can do subtle things that make things feel like they're moving a little bit.

It could even be, like, in the background subtly. And the reason it matters is it's not like someone's going to look at your email and be like, seems so cool. I see stuff moving.

It's that subconscious instant grab of attention that we're looking for. So let me ask you, though, when you send it out and you said that basically an anime gif is a few different images just stitched together.

Is there any type of deliverability issues? Do I go to the junk folder more if I use an animated gif? Is there any size I need to think about?

Yeah, yeah, great point, Jay.

And I do want to just touch on what one thing you said there like, oh, if you're in a regulated industry, that's all the more reason to do this, probably because none of your competitors are doing it and it will help you stand out. When you are thinking of making the gif, the thing that is most important is the size of the gif. So you don't want it to be more than two megabytes.

And that's for a host of reasons.

But the biggest thing is just when someone opens it, you don't want them to, like, not see anything or just be stuck on the first frame of the GIF for a long time. So keep it small. Easygift.com It's a great website to go to to make your gifts. Right.

And then just keep in mind, how big is it as you create that image?

That is fantastic. And gifts are for everybody. Don't think this is for some sort of sophisticated marketer. It could be a for sales email. It could be in your newsletter.

It could be in an offer late email, consumer B2B doesn't matter. And anybody that can see an image inside of an email can see your gift. The recipient doesn't need something special.

It's really just images tied together. So awesome. I think we're going to convince a lot of people, hopefully, to test. It's always about testing an animated gift.

But now we're going to get into the segment of this ridiculous podcast called since you didn't ask, which is nothing to do with email or marketing or business or I don't know what has to do with. So, all right, let me ask you a question. You're from Canada, you're from Ottawa, and I salute you. The capital, I believe, of Canada.

I feel like I should know that. But it is. Yeah, Good.

I got that right.

That's super embarrassing. If it was wrong. And I'm not. I live in Florida. I always feel that you're gonna. You're gonna hate me.

That Canada gets, like, a weird version of what we have here in the U.S. like, I saw the Canadian version of the show Chopped, and it had, like, a different host. It was the guy that was married to Tori Spelling was the host. I'm like, that dude's the host of Chopped in Canada. You get that vibe.

You guys always feel like that. Like, we're over here.

Yeah. Yes. There's definitely some elements. You know, we also have, like, our own football league, which it's not the NFL, that's for sure.

But yeah, my thing is, like, I love going to the States because I love Shake Shack and I love In N Out Burger. But, like, we don't have that in Canada. I don't know why. It would crush if it was here, but we don't have that up here.

Do you have, like, Dancing with the Stars? Do you have that in Canada? Is it like, Dancing with the Kids stars?

Yeah. I would say usually what happens is we get the American version, which has, like, a way bigger budget. Right.

And then if it does, well, they're like, someone here says, hey, you know what we should do? We should make our own version, but we'll put, like, a tenth of the budget into it, and it's never as good.

That's amazing. I want to get a feed of Canadian TV so I can watch, like, you know, because I watch horrible television.

I can watch even more horrible versions of the Heart. Like, you have, like, Real Housewives of Alberta. I mean, is that like.

Not yet. Not yet. But, I mean, you know, that's. Well, probably will at some point. We had the Amazing Race Canada at one point.

Where did they go? Like, to just every province.

All over. All over the country. Yeah. Which, I mean, there was some parts that were kind of cool about that because it's like, oh, yeah, I've been there.

But again, it's. Yeah.

Is it the most offensive thing, though? I. I don't even know if this is, like, I might get canceled for saying this. Is it offensive if I said to you that Canada is America's hat?

Well, Robin Williams had a good joke which was like, oh, Canada is like a loft apartment over a really awesome party. And I was like, what, man? Come on.

Well, let me give a commercial for Canada. I love Canada, by the way. So I've been to many different parts of Canada. I think it's like the happy version of the United States. So I love it there.

I'm not trying to throw. Be. Whatever. Get people angry at me from Canada. I love you all. All 41 million of you.

Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like everyone should come up to Canada, you know, especially if you like winter things. Canada's great, where everyone's very nice.

You know, there's great cities up here, and you can eat a beaver tail.

There you go. And you can go to Quebec and get poutine, because I've done that.

And Pepsi and beaver tails, man. You gotta.

I don't know which beaver tail. What does beaver tell you?

Got to come up here to try it. I can't tell you. My Canadian listeners, they'll all know what I'm talking about. But you see, you gotta come up and check it out.

Happening. It's gonna happen. All right, so we covered a lot today. We are all going to try animated GIFS videos.

We're getting rid of that myth that you could put it in emails that you should use it. Try animated gifs. We love Canada. We're all going to wait for Real Housewives of New of Alberta, which is going to blow up everywhere.

And Everybody check out knack.comk n a k.com and go to their resource tab. They have crazy reports and design stuff that you could download and Follow Pierce on LinkedIn. Pierce, we did it. Any parting words?

Yeah, you know, it's always great. Jay, thank you so much for having me. It's great. I want to see more gifts out there in people's emails. So try it out and let me know how it goes.

Amazing. All right, thanks everybody. Thanks for being here. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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