I like Ralph Lauren’s emailings: one of my recent Emailzoo posts featured an example of their campaign. They are image heavy, but then again they have a product to sell: looks are important in this case. This makes it vulnerable too: what if the images don’t work? All you end up with is this:

Next you ask: why not click the online version? That’s a safe haven, isn’t it? Well no, the online version showed the exact same thing without images. They do have alt tags filled in so that helps a bit, but still all the magic is gone. Since this arrived only 4 days ago I don’t believe the images would have already been deleted. The search box top right did work though, so that’s a plus – even though the email client used here is GMail, so I’m not sure this would work everywhere. The bottom half contains the regular text concerning delivery/shipping info, your privacy and company info, so at least it’s not an all image disaster like the latest Atlantic Records mailing.

In the end this goes to show that everything and anything can and will break (hi Murphy), but it hurts hardest when your email designs are image heavy: a more balanced email with background color and font effects would have been less impacted than this one.