Beefree blog

Improving your email accessibility with Beefree

Andrew King
Andrew King
Oct 19, 2023
Improving your email accessibility with Beefree
Improving your email accessibility with Beefree

Email marketing is a powerful tool for reaching your audience, but it often comes with its fair share of challenges.

One of the most common dilemmas that marketers face is the need to create visually appealing and accessible emails without the support of a skilled HTML developer.

This challenge has led many marketers to resort to image-only emails, which may look great but often lack when it comes to accessibility. For instance, screen readers can’t read text that is contained within an image, rendering much of your email content inaccessible to those with visual impairments.

Fortunately, there's a solution: Beefree.

In this blog post, we will explore how Beefree can help you improve your email production process and enable you to build beautiful, responsive, and accessible emails. We'll demonstrate how this intuitive drag-and-drop email builder empowers marketers to create emails faster, ensuring they meet accessibility standards and best practices.

Why Marketers Resort to Image-Only Emails

Here are some common reasons why marketers might choose image-only emails:

Visual Appeal: Image-only emails can be visually striking. Marketers may believe that a well-designed, image-heavy email will capture the recipient's attention and leave a memorable impression.

Simplicity: Creating image-only emails can be straightforward. For marketers without HTML coding skills, using an image as the main content is an easier and more efficient option.

Design Control: With images, marketers have more control over the design, layout, and aesthetics of their emails. They can create visually appealing content without relying on complex coding.

The downsides of image-only emails

While sending image-only emails may have certain advantages in terms of design, they can pose several issues and drawbacks, which can negatively impact your email marketing efforts and give some users a poor experience.

Here are some of the key issues associated with sending image-only emails:

Accessibility Concerns: One of the most significant issues with image-only emails is that they can be inaccessible to recipients with visual impairments or those who rely on screen readers. Since the email content is embedded in images, it cannot be read aloud by screen-reading software, effectively excluding a portion of your audience.

Reduced Engagement: Image-only emails may have lower engagement rates compared to emails with a mix of text and images. Because images don’t always render properly or are compatible with screen readers, recipients may be less likely to engage.

Spam Filters and Deliverability: Many spam filters and email clients view image-heavy emails suspiciously. Sending image-only emails may increase the likelihood of your messages ending up in recipients' spam folders or being flagged as potential spam.

Mobile Responsiveness: As mentioned above, image-only emails may not be mobile-responsive. This causes them to display poorly on smartphones and tablets, leading to a poor user experience and decreased engagement.

Slow Loading Times: Emails consisting of large images can take longer to load, especially for users with slower internet connections. Slow-loading emails may lead to frustration and decreased reader patience, which can cause a bad brand reputation.

Lack of Fallback Content: In cases where images fail to load for some recipients (due to email client settings or other factors), image-only emails provide no fallback content, leaving the email effectively blank.

It's advisable to use a balanced approach in your email marketing campaigns to address these issues. Incorporate HTML text, alt text for images, and a good mix of text and visuals to ensure your emails are accessible, engaging, and capable of reaching a broader audience.

Additionally, consider using responsive design techniques to optimize the email's display on various devices and screen sizes.

Introducing Beefree

Beefree is an email marketing game-changer. It's a user-friendly drag-and-drop email builder that empowers marketers to create stunning emails while adhering to best practices and accessibility standards.

Key Features and Benefits of Beefree

  • Drag-and-Drop Interface: Beefree's intuitive interface lets you build emails by simply dragging and dropping elements onto your canvas.
  • Responsive Design: Ensure your emails look great on any device with Beefree's responsive design capabilities.
  • HTML Text: Easily add HTML text to your emails for improved accessibility.
  • Bulletproof Buttons: Create CTA buttons that work seamlessly across all email clients, ensuring a consistent user experience.

Now, let's put Beefree to the test by recreating an image-only email with accessibility and best practices in mind.

The Experiment:
Recreating an Image-Only Email with Beefree

Step 1: Selecting a Sample Image-Only Email

To showcase the capabilities of Beefree, we've chosen a sample image-only email as our starting point.

For example, this email on Email Love from Last Crumb features some stunning photography and engaging content; however, the whole thing is made with images. While, the overall look and feel of the email could easily be recreated with HTML using Beefree.

The Last Crumb’s image-only email at least uses descriptive Alt text, but we think we can significantly improve the email’s accessibility with Beefree.

Step 2: Recreating It Using Beefree

  1. Extract the images from the original email

The first step in this process is to extract those delicious-looking cookie photos from the original email and any other elements that we want to keep as an image. In this particular email, most of the text can be easily recreated with HTML text in Beefree.

  1. Adding HTML Text for Improved Accessibility

One of the key improvements we’ll make is to add HTML text to our email. This ensures that the content is accessible to all recipients, including those who rely on screen readers. Once we have added our images, you can easily use the Paragraph content block to add your text. The text font, color, line height, and spacing can all be adjusted to replicate the look of the image-only email.

There are a couple of limitations when using HTML text over images. Firstly, Beefree offers a range of Google and Websafe fonts that will work in most email clients, but there were custom fonts used in this Last Crumb email that we could not exactly replicate. Last Crumb also uses multiple fonts in a single paragraph, which could not be replicated in Beefree – A small price to pay for improved accessibility.

  1. Incorporating Bulletproof Buttons

Next, we’ll replace the image-based buttons with bulletproof buttons that render consistently across all email clients. This ensures a better user experience for our subscribers.

Step 3: Comparing the Original and Recreated Emails

As you can see, the recreated email looks great and adheres to accessibility standards and best practices.

ACCESSIBILITY AND BEST PRACTICES IN EMAIL DESIGN

Email accessibility is a critical consideration for modern marketers. Beefree makes creating emails that everyone can access and enjoy easier than ever. This is how the Beefree email looks with images turned off—a significant improvement over the image-based email.

Our Tips for getting the most out of Beefree

  • Set Clear Objectives: Before you even start designing, clearly understand what you want the email to achieve. Whether it’s a promotional campaign, an announcement, or a newsletter, the content and design should align with your goals.
  • Use Templates: Beefree offers over 1000 templates! Start with these and customize them to match your brand rather than building from scratch. This can significantly reduce the time it takes to produce an email.
  • Drag-and-Drop Builder: Familiarize yourself with all the features and tools available. The more comfortable you are with the interface, the faster you can create emails. The key things to understand are how rows work, what you can do with content blocks, and how to customize the look and feel of your content. I recommend playing with Beefree’s padding and spacing features to make your emails look right.
  • Consistent Branding: Set and use a consistent color palette, font selection, and logo placement for all emails. This not only establishes brand consistency but also streamlines the design process. This can quickly be done in the settings of Beefree.
  • Mobile Responsiveness: Always preview and test your email on mobile devices. Your email may not stack correctly or your padding may make some parts of your email look strange. Don’t worry; Beefree enables you to show and hide content on mobile and desktop, so your email looks right across devices.
  • Use Custom Blocks: If you use a particular design or content block often (like a particular footer or header), save it as a custom block. This lets you quickly insert it into future emails.
  • Integrate with Other Tools: Beefree allows integration with numerous other platforms. Ensure that your email designs can be easily exported and used in your email marketing tool, whether Mailchimp, SendGrid, or others.
  • Images: Use high-quality images, and always optimize them for the web to ensure faster load times. Beefree provides tools to resize, crop, and adjust your images.
  • Test, Test, Test: Before sending out to your entire list, send test emails to yourself and a small team. Check for broken links, visual consistency, and any other issues that might arise. You can do this directly from Beefree.
  • Collaborate: If you’re working with a team, use Beefree’s collaboration features. Get feedback directly in the platform and streamline the review and approval process.

Make Accessibile Emails a priority with Beefree

Beefree has proven to be a great tool for email marketers with limited design and coding experience. It empowers you to create visually appealing, accessible, and best-practice-compliant emails without the need for coding skills. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or starting, Beefree can streamline your email marketing efforts and help you deliver better results to your subscribers.

Ready to supercharge your email marketing with Beefree? Sign up for free today and experience the difference for yourself. Your subscribers will thank you for it.

8 Common Email Spam Triggers That Can Damage Your Sender Reputation

Whether you’re employing a lifecycle email marketing strategy or simply confirming an order, we’ve outlined the basics of how spam prevention works, why it matters, and how to avoid running afoul of some commonly used triggers.
Beefree team
Feb 14, 2025

Email strategies you’ve likely heard of but haven’t implemented yet

While email marketing has come a long way and is changing faster than ever, there’s only so much you can do within 600x1,500 pixels. However, there are no limits to where your creativity can take you. 
Kruti Shah
Feb 5, 2025

How to Leverage Email Campaigns to Gather Sincere Product Reviews

What do customers think about your brand’s products? The best way to find out is to ask them directly, which you can do via strategic email campaigns. Keep reading to learn how!
Beefree team
Jan 22, 2025

8 Common Email Spam Triggers That Can Damage Your Sender Reputation

Whether you’re employing a lifecycle email marketing strategy or simply confirming an order, we’ve outlined the basics of how spam prevention works, why it matters, and how to avoid running afoul of some commonly used triggers.
Beefree team
Beefree team
14 Feb
2025

In 2024, roughly 361.6 billion emails were sent per day. Whether you're using email for business or to keep in contact with your long distance cousin (do people still do this?), it’s easy to picture just how clogged someone's email can get. That's where modern day Email Service Providers (ESPs) come to save the day with trigger-based spam filtration tools.

For user these spam filters help ensure a smooth email experience, free of spammy and fishy emails. However, as email marketers, these filters lead us to be overly cautious out of fear that our emails are not accidentally filtered out.

Whether you’re employing a lifecycle email marketing strategy or simply confirming an order, we’ve outlined the basics of how spam prevention works, why it matters, and how to avoid running afoul of some commonly used triggers.

Why you need to avoid email spam triggers

Whether you’re an ESG reporting software or a travel company email spam triggers can email marketing performance and in turn hurt your business. For one, there’s the obvious reason that if your emails get sent to the spam folder, they probably won’t be seen. That's time and effort wasted.

Beyond that, being sent to the spam folder too many times delegitimizes your email marketing, which damages what’s known as your sender reputation. When just starting out, this reputation is effectively neutral. But if it gets too low, it could damage your marketing performance and even result in being blocklisted.

How email spam filtering works

As mentioned above, spam filters are implemented as a form of quality assurance and protection for end-users. Here's how ESPs determine content to be spam:

  • Sender reputation analysis: ESPs check sender reputation based on authentication, user complaints, bounce rates and sending patterns. They’ll also check the reputations of your IP address and web domain.

  • Content analysis: Content filtering uses triggers like keywords, formatting and error detection to distinguish spam from legitimate email marketing.

  • Blacklists: Along with sender reputation metrics, ESPs also cross-reference email senders against any of several blacklist databases. Being on even one of these means you’ll struggle to climb out of the spam folder at all.

8 common email spam triggers and how to avoid them

Now let's get to the good stuff. Prevention is generally the best strategy when it comes to avoiding email spam triggers. Here are seven factors commonly used by ESPs to filter spam emails, and the simplest solutions for dealing with them.

1. Lack of authentication

Missing authentication is one of the first red flags an ESP will pick up on. Authentication shows you’ve taken certain steps to establish legitimacy. It’s also used to prevent fraudsters from impersonating your brand online. There are three commonly used forms of email authentication:

  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF): This means publishing a list of mail servers and IPs with permission to send messages using your domain. This is one reason it’s important to conduct email marketing through a branded business email, rather than a personal account.

  • Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM): A cryptographic signature which shows a message’s original content has not been altered during sending. Think of it like the tamper-proof seal on a bottle of milk.

  • Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC): A way for you to establish how you want receiving platforms to handle authentication failures related to your domain.

2. Shady linking practices

Link placement and presentation play an important role in email marketing. Aside from engaging recipients and securing click-throughs, using links appropriately helps avoid your emails looking like spam.

Questionable linking practices include:

  • Links to domains with poor reputations
  • Excessive numbers of in-email links
  • Compressed, modified or obscured links, particularly when generic link shorteners are used

Only link to your own authenticated domain. Also, use an unlimited bandwidth VPS to help ensure your website access speed is always stable and fast. This will give visitors the assurance that your site is legitimate.

Don’t forget to make the purpose of any in-email link absolutely clear.  

3. Content

Although the reason for an email landing in a spam folder is often related to authentication, reputation, or poor formatting, content can at times be the culprit. Here are elements that you should look at if you suspect that your content is why your emails are not reaching their recipients:

  • Typos
  • Irrelevant content that doesn’t foster positive engagement
  • Poorly translated text
  • Partner content with poor reputation
  • Possibly offensive content
  • URLs or images with poor reputation

Another thing to note is language detection filters. Various words, phrases and tone choices have strong associations with scam emails. This includes certain buzzwords, vague or exaggerated claims, or excessive sales jargon. However, this is only really an issue when you already have a bad reputation.

Nevertheless, let’s say you’re beginning to build your reputation back up and are conducting Black Friday email marketing. While it’s important to use engaging language and strong CTAs, you should avoid terms like:

  • Limited time only
  • 100% free
  • Make money from home
  • Avoid bankruptcy
  • You have won

4. Bounce rates

A ‘bounce’ is when an email doesn’t arrive in the recipient’s inbox. This could be due to it being sent to a fake email address, an out-of-date email that is no longer in use, a full inbox, etc.

When a sender frequently experiences high bounce rates for their emails, this damages their reputation with ESPs.

But how do you improve bounce rates and, therefore, your reputation? The best way is to have good segmentation practices to ensure the right content goes out to the right people. You should also keep your list clean by regularly evaluating it and removing hard-bounce email addresses as well as inactive subscribers.

Moreover, ensure you send relevant messages that your audience actually wants to receive. Of course, always be mindful of the rest of the triggers on this list to make sure you’re protecting your sender reputation.

5. Misleading email subjects

Even if you’re not trying to do anything malicious, misleading subject lines can trigger email spam filters. For example, an email might claim to promote educational B2B content about internal audit controls. Then, instead, link the user to a landing page to sell them a product.

Always set clear topic sentences as email subject lines. Try to summarize the content and intent of the email. If you’re sending a welcome email for customer retention or promoting, say, a product or sale, make it obvious before the recipient clicks on it.

6. Poorly written and formatted emails

Poor formatting and low-quality writing are other important email spam triggers. Common writing triggers include:

  • Overly vague language lacking personal detail
  • Typos and spelling errors
  • Being too brief

A marketing email can trigger spam filters if it lacks formatting of any kind, or if there are inconsistencies. It’s also suspicious when marketing emails lack branded color schemes, imagery or the correct logo design.
Avoiding these email triggers is simply a matter of emphasizing professional communication standards in email marketing.

7. Poor engagement

Low engagement manifests itself through a lack of interaction with your emails from the recipients—low open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, as well as low subscriber count are all indications. 

Consistently low engagement will likely result in your emails being filtered into spam. To combat this, you should strive to deliver good and captivating content tailored to your audience. More specifically, you can:

  • Use segmentation to personalize your emails and craft the most compelling content for each segment.
  • Put together attractive subject lines
  • Make use of solid and clear CTAs

8. Getting blacklisted

Improving your sender reputation, also means you don’t run the risk of being blacklisted. Blacklists are a useful prevention tool, but if you end up on one of these lists, your email marketing is more or less guaranteed to end up in spam folders.

Aim for prevention with email security and compliance training, and don’t send unsolicited marketing emails. You can also use a blacklist checking tool to make sure your sender emails haven’t been compromised.

Maintaining your sender reputation is essential

Email spam triggers aren’t all bad, they ensure that your well crafted messages aren’t drowned out and that users are able to easily see the emails they’re interested in. 

To reap these benefits, you need to keep an eye on these triggers and protect your sender reputation. Don’t worry, though. It’s easy to deliver marketing copy that avoids email spam triggers once you know what they’re looking for.

Email strategies you’ve likely heard of but haven’t implemented yet

While email marketing has come a long way and is changing faster than ever, there’s only so much you can do within 600x1,500 pixels. However, there are no limits to where your creativity can take you. 
Kruti Shah
Kruti Shah
5 Feb
2025

Now, let's be honest—you’ve likely heard about all of these rotating for the last few years. While email marketing has come a long way and is changing faster than ever, there’s only so much you can do within 600x1,500 pixels. However, there are no limits to where your creativity can take you. 

Let’s get into it.  

#1. Unique, tailored experiences 

Damian Grabarczyk, the co-founder and growth marketer of PetLab Co., says, “We faced the challenge of connecting meaningfully with an audience that expects more than one-size-fits-all communication.” 

When we speak about crafting tailored emails we mean going beyond the recipient's first name in the subject line. We’re talking about optimizing your entire email strategy to design multi-stage touchpoints to nurture leads across the customer lifecycle. As well as, leveraging data to send hyper-personalized, relevant, and engaging emails that feel less like a broadcast message and more like a conversation. 

Many are using AI machine learning algorithms and AI automation to analyze customer interactions, past purchases, browsing habits, website visits, and even social media behavior to curate engaging email content that resonates deeply with the real-time needs of recipients.

For PetLab Co this looked like including content such as an individual’s pet health history or product usage timelines. Damian Grabarzyk expands, “This approach transformed the conversion rate and strengthened customer loyalty. As we look ahead, I see brands in 2025 moving beyond generic personalization to adopt strategies that make customers feel truly understood and valued.”

On the other hand, many are leaning into user-generated content (UGC) for crafting tailored experiences. Customers today are more likely to trust the opinions of peers over branded messages. UGC like customer reviews, testimonials, videos, and photos are the best form of social proof depicting real people using and benefitting from your products or services. 

We see the benefits of using both AI and UGC to get the most out of your email conversions ;). 

#2. AI tools as an addition, not a substitution

Experts at NordPass state, "AI-powered content generation tools are not here to replace email copywriters and marketers. These tools make us more efficient. The smarter the tool is, the better equipped we are to create high-performing email content that drives results." 

AI tools can support us by significantly enhancing the speed, precision, and effectiveness of your emails. For instance while traditionally A/B testing has required a lot of time to analyze small variations with AI you quickly implement and test multiple email elements and make adjustments based on real-time engagement data. There are AI algorithms that can even predict which variations are most likely to resonate with different audience segments, leading to more accurate targeting and faster optimization.

In short, AI tools are revolutionizing the way we craft and optimize our email’s deliverability. There are many different types of AI solutions so we suggest finding the right one for your needs. 

#3. Even more transparency around data

With AI continuing to rise, folks are more and more concerned about where their data is going. That’s where zero-party data collection becomes a key strategy in email marketing, allowing you to gather data directly from customers rather than relying on third-party sources. 

Zero-party data includes information that consumers willingly share, such as preferences, interests, and purchase intentions. This data is often collected through surveys, preference centers, quizzes, or interactive content and is highly valuable because it is shared explicitly, ensuring accuracy and deeper personalization without privacy concerns associated with third-party tracking.

As privacy regulations tighten, zero-party data will empower you to deliver hyper-personalized email experiences while respecting user privacy. This approach will help you build trust, as customers feel more in control of their data, and you gain insights that lead to more relevant and engaging email content.

#4. The death of static emails

With attention span getting shorter day after day, digest-format emails are expected to rise in popularity in 2025. Presenting email content in an easy-to-scan, organized, and minimalistic layout will surely help deliver the most relevant information in a fraction of the time. 

Additionally, interactive emails will allow recipients to directly engage within the email without having to visit a landing page or website. Interactive elements like product carousels, polls, and quizzes create a dynamic experience that keeps subscribers engaged, especially in visually driven industries like fashion brands

So what now? 

You’ve heard these strategies before, but now it’s time to actually put them into action. The brands that win at email marketing in 2025 won’t just be sending emails—they’ll be creating experiences. Whether it’s hyper-personalized content, AI-driven efficiency, zero-party data collection, or interactive emails that break the mold, the key is to stay ahead of the curve.

So, what’s the first strategy you’ll finally implement? Your inbox (and your audience) are waiting.

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