A missing image is not a missing offer

Answer A missing image is not a missing offer, unless you hid the offer in the image. RFC 2387 defines multipart/related, a way to send a compound object. One part is the root. Other parts are related to it. In mail, the root is often the HTML letter and the related parts are images the letter refers to. If a related part does not show, the root can still be read. That only helps you when the root actually contains the offer.

The note that started this: RFC 2387, The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type, RFC 2387.

Designers put the headline in a banner because the banner looks sharper than live text. The banner is a related part, or a remote picture, and it is the first thing a cautious mailbox will decline to show. If you are checking solo ad pricing, price a letter you can read with pictures off. A rate that assumes every image painted is a rate from a friendlier inbox than the one you are buying.

The document's idea is simple. The pieces belong together, and the root is the place to start. A client that understands the structure can show the root and pull in the related parts. A client that does not can still show the root if the root is readable on its own. A creative with an empty root and a beautiful related picture has inverted the structure. The picture became the product. The product then depends on a fetch the reader did not promise.

What is a multipart/related message?

RFC 2387 defines a compound message. One part is the root, often the letter, and other parts are related to it, often images. The parts travel together. A missing related part does not erase the root.

Travel together is the difference between an image inside the message and an image hosted on a website. An inside image can still fail to display, because the client may refuse it, but it does not require a second server to be awake. A remote image fails when the server fails, when the tracker wrapped in the image URL fails, or when the mailbox blocks remote content. Know which kind you bought. Ask the seller. If they cannot say whether the pictures are inside the message or loaded from a URL, they have not looked at their own creative.

Related does not mean required for the meaning. The specification ties parts into one object so a client can present them as a unit. Your job is to make the unit survive the loss of every part except the text. That is a writing task, not a protocol task. Write the offer in the root.

• The offer is visible with images disabled.
• The seller can say whether images are inside the message or remote.
• A broken image is not called a failed send by itself.
• The click is a link in the text, not a hotspot only on the picture.

Should the offer live only in an image?

No. Images are blocked, proxied, or dropped often enough that the root has to carry the offer in text. A picture of a sentence is not the sentence. Read the creative with images off.

Proxies matter. Some mailboxes fetch images on their own so the sender cannot see the reader's address. The picture may display in a way that tells you nothing about a person. Other mailboxes show nothing until the reader asks. Both behaviors are common. A creative that needs the picture in order to say what is for sale will be silent for one of those groups and unmeasured for the other.

Read it yourself, images off, on a phone. If you cannot tell the price, the promise, and the next step, the reader cannot either. Fix the root. Then put the pictures back as support. Support can be beautiful. Support cannot be the only copy.

Does a loaded image count as a click on a solo ad?

No. A related image loading is the mail client fetching a part, or a remote picture. A click is a request to the offer. Keep those counts in different columns.

Sellers who sell opens are often selling image fetches. A related part that displays is closer to that fetch than to a decision. Do not pay an open rate that is secretly a picture rate, and do not pay a click rate that is secretly an open. Ask which URL the report counts. If the URL is the image, you bought a picture. If the URL is the offer, you bought a chance a person asked for the next page.

RFC 2387 keeps the root and the relatives in one message. Keep the offer in the root. A missing image is a display problem. A missing sentence is a creative you should not buy.