Insert a GIF in an email campaign

A few things you need to know before using GIFs in your email campaigns.

Laura Russell avatar
Written by Laura Russell
Updated over a week ago

What you need to know about GIFs

  • The maximum GIF size is 10MB
    Try to upload anything bigger and it won't work. If you have a GIF that's too big, try cutting it down to size using a third-party image editor.

  • GIFs don't animate in every email client
    Each provider handles GIFs differently. If they're not supported, they'll normally show the first frame as a still image.

  • Use a test send to check your GIF
    You can send test sends to check how each email client displays your email.

Add a GIF to an email campaign

You can add GIFs to your campaign in the same way as you add other image types.

Using GIFs with Microsoft Outlook 365

GIF support is new to Microsoft Outlook and not all versions have it. For example, due to a phased roll-out of GIF support, some versions of Outlook 2016 still are unable to play GIFs.

Microsoft fully introduced GIF support in Outlook 365, but sometimes they require a little tweaking to get looking just right.

GIFs play automatically and loop three times, after which they pause. Play the GIF again using the play icon.

How to stop Microsoft Outlook 365 resizing your GIFs

If you don’t insert your GIFs correctly, Microsoft 365 might stretch the image. Look how the image below isn’t perfectly square:

stretched-gif-1.png

To make sure your GIFs display correctly in Microsoft Outlook 365, resize your GIF to stop it from getting warped. For example, if your GIF is 600 x 600 in the campaign, but is sized at 800 x 800, then resize your GIF to 600 x 600.

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