With the volume of email people receive every day, sometimes it’s hard to stand out from the rest.  Most mass emails have static images with some words.  Maybe the formatting is a bit different, but for the most part, they’re all similar.  One of the questions we get a lot here at Salsa is how to embed video in an email.  The answer is, right now you can’t.  Email providers don't allow this.

However, there's a solution that’s close to video, works among most email providers, and most importantly, will make your email to stand out from the rest: animated GIFs.  When the idea of embedding an animated GIF in an email first occured to me, I wondered, "How come I’ve never seen it done before?"  So, I decided to set out to see if it’s even technically possible.  And it is!  While animated GIFs are not supported in some email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook, they do render correctly in Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Apple Mail and more.  And even when the GIF doesn't render as an animated image, the recipient will still just see a static image.

Websites like GIFsoup (and others) allow you to convert Youtube videos into image animation.  The only limit is the size of the file. 

How could animated GIFs be used to spice up your organization's emails?  Here are a few ideas:

•    Show the destruction of a forest to emphasis an environmental action

•    Give a teaser of a video instead of just an image

•    An animated thermometer for fundraising

•    You finally get to take advantage of all of the latest internet memes!

Click here to check out this sample message I’ve set up to illustrate the usage of an animated GIF in an email.