Turn your promo poster into an email that works

Why one big image works badly in email

• Some inboxes hide images until the reader clicks: classic Outlook is set to block automatic picture downloads by default (Microsoft). Until then, a poster email is an empty box.
• Image-only emails “can hurt deliverability and accessibility because inbox providers look for a balance of text and images,” Klaviyo writes (Klaviyo).
• Screen readers can't read the words in a picture: “If your message only exists as an image, people using screen readers won't be able to access it” (Mailchimp).
• A poster made for a wall or a feed is wide and full of small print; in a phone-sized email, that text “may end up looking too tiny on the small screen” (Litmus).
• A text button still shows when images are off; Mailchimp calls that the biggest benefit of these “bulletproof” buttons (Mailchimp).

How to fix it by hand today

1. Keep the photo, not the poster: crop it to the dish or the drinks and put it in an image block. Mailchimp recommends images up to 1 MB (Mailchimp).
2. Type the poster's words into a text block: the headline, the offer, the dates and times.
3. Add a button block with your booking or ordering link.
4. Give the image alt text of one or two sentences that says what's on it (Mailchimp).

What we're building

Upload the poster; get back an email in those three parts: the photo cropped to email width, the words as real text, and a button. Then copy the HTML into Mailchimp, Klaviyo or your POS's email tool. It isn't ready yet, and nothing on this page converts a poster today.