Images have the power to tell a story that words cannot begin to convey. ClickZ has begun a series examining consumer email behavior and in this installment, they look at utilizing images in your email marketing. They offer this analysis with statistics:

Since most email clients turn images off by default, I'm often asked about the use of images in email messages. Because we live in such a visual world, where images and videos are seemingly everywhere, consumers are expecting to see images in your email creative. Moreover, with the popularity of reading email on mobile devices that are fully equipped to render HYML, the audience who requires text-only emails is shrinking. It's important to have a properly formatted email creative with a compelling template, as this will assist in driving audience engagement and potentially advocacy. Given that images are turned off, my firm set out to measure how many consumers actually turn them back on. We found that:

• Fifty-five percent of consumers stated that they turn on the images in the emails that they receive, which rivals the 57 percent of consumers that state they check their primary personal email account on their mobile devices.
• Far fewer consumers add sender addresses to their address book, which in most email clients will enable image rendering by default. Sixteen percent of consumers stated that they added an email marketer's email address to their address book.

It's good to know that some people don't block the wonderful visuals you are trying to provide, but you should also be prepared for those that do. The article goes on to discuss some best practices for including images in your email marketing campaign further. This will ensure that the people you are trying to communicate with actually see what you are trying to convey.