Low click rate for every ESP besides Gmail

Image-only emails make up around 90% of the campaigns that we send, with the others being only plain text. Domain deliverability & seller reputation are both not a problem - is there possibly another reason why other ESP’s might block certain images loading (e.g., image weight)?

Hi ​@Austin Chick 
 

Image weight is for sure an issue, putting the images through https://tinypng.com/ and testing click rate and image loading would be worth testing

But as mentioned, i would check the domain health and Dmarc settings as a priority.
You are getting in to inbox, but the images may not be trusted.

Thanks

Tim

Do you know if there’s a cut-off weight point where the images don’t load?

We put the images through tinypng already and crop them so that none are too big (for load times). Each image would be at a max of around 500kb (though most are smaller).

Would yahoo, icloud etc. prevent images from loading if they are above a certain weight (eg., 400kb)?

Thanks

Hi ​@Austin Chick,

I did a bit of searching to see if these other inboxes have a maximum image size, and there doesn’t seem to be a max size within the kb range for any of them. From what I’m seeing most inboxes have a max file size, images included, in the mb range, with Yahoo having a 25 mb limit and Apple having a 20 mb limit for all file types.

I’m curious to know if you’re excluding bot clicks from your reporting. Bot clicks can occur in some inbox providers, and are usually due to the inbox clicking links automatically, to ensure emails are safe/not spam. We record these clicks, because they are technically happening, but the result is that some of the clicks in the reporting will ultimately be bot clicks. If you’re not excluding these clicks yet, I’d recommend going to email attribution settings and excluding bot clicks from reporting, and then to your general attribution settings and excluding bot interactions from Clicked Email.

Doing this will ensure that you’re only tracking human clicks moving forward, and any discrepancy in click rate between inbox providers is purely due to human clicks, rather than the inbox on one provider automatically clicking links in emails.

If you have any questions about this, let me know!

-Byrne

I know you mentioned you don’t have any deliverability issues, but have you tried doing some inbox placement tests yet? It does actually look like open rates for example are much lower with hotmail, which implies you might be hitting spam there vs. the inbox.