Where to Find Free Images for Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Want to captivate your email readers with stunning images while also being mindful of your budget?
There’s an abundance of websites online that you can use to legally get images for free.
These images can significantly boost your email marketing results by skyrocketing your email click-through rate…
Which is why in this article, you’re going to discover the four best websites that host these images, as well as an additional method you can use to boost your email marketing results even more.
Why You Need Great Images in Your Emails
According to the 2022 Digital Consumer Trends Index, email remains the #1 medium for customer outreach, outperforming paid social and display advertising by an incredible 108%!
But if you want to maximize the potential of the emails you send, you need to take advantage of the power of great images.
That’s because according to a study by the marketing software company Vero, which analyzed data from over 5,000 campaigns, campaigns with images had a whopping 42% higher click-through rate than campaigns without images.
Now, while there are many different paid websites you can source your images from…
If you want to use free images, it’s important that you use them legally.
Legally Using Free Images
Using copyrighted images in your emails that you don’t have permission to use can have a variety of legal implications, including statutory damages.
Copyright is a form of intellectual property law that protects original works including photographs.
So, if a photographer takes a picture on their phone, they would own the copyright to that image… and if you were to use that image without permission, you would be subjected to copyright infringement.
Fortunately, there are many images online that come with various licensing agreements that give you legal permission to use them for free under specified conditions.
Here are the most common kinds of licensing agreements:
- Royalty-free: This license means that if you pay a one-time fee, you can use the image multiple times for different purposes without having to pay additional royalties.
- Rights-managed: This license allows you to use the image one time as per the terms of the agreement, which includes things like the duration of its use and where it will be used.
- Creative Commons: This is a public copyright license that enables the free distribution of a copyrighted image.
- Public Domain: You can use these images freely and without permission as they aren’t protected by copyright (due to the copyright expiring or being forfeited)
Where to Find the Best Free Images
Here are some of the best free image websites you can start using today.
1. Unsplash
Unsplash offers over three million high-resolution, royalty-free photos.
It has a user-friendly interface that allows you to easily either select a category of images or search for an image using a specific search term.
Unsplash’s images can be used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes without seeking permission or providing attribution…
But note that when using this site (and the other free image sites on this list), you cannot sell the images without significant modification.
2. Pixabay
Pixabay is home to over 3.5 million royalty-free stock photos, vector graphics, GIFS, and videos.
From its homepage, you can easily choose what type of media you want, as well as the theme you want to search under.
3. Pexels
Just like Unsplash and Pixabay, Pexels also contains millions of free photos that you can start using today.
Pexels has a user-friendly interface that allows you to choose the type of media you want, and then search for it in the search bar.
Below the search bar, you can also see what kind of images are currently trending.
4. Canva
Canva is known for its design tool software.
But what you may not know is that it also offers an image library containing both free and premium images.
In addition to this library, Canva gives you the ability to edit and customize these images directly on the platform, which is great if you want to add something to an image on the fly, like text.
These four platforms provide you with literally millions of images that you can use for free, and in most cases you don’t even need to create an account.
But make sure to follow the guidelines listed on the page featuring the image.
Verify Your Email List for Even Better Results From Your Email Marketing
As mentioned, including images in your emails can give you a 42% higher click-through rate.
But we also mentioned we would give you another way to increase your email marketing results…
And that’s by verifying your email list.
Email verification is the process of ensuring that the emails on your list you are sending to belong to a real and active inbox.
This process involves using a tool that cleans your email list, removing the invalid or inactive email addresses while sparing the real ones.
The reason you’d want to verify your email list is that it improves your email deliverability (the likelihood of your emails reaching the intended recipient), which could transform the results you’re currently seeing from your email marketing.
You can try out EmailOversight’s email validation tool for free and verify your email list today.
Conclusion
Leveraging high-quality images in your email marketing campaigns is a proven strategy to enhance engagement and increase click-through rates.
A plethora of websites like Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and Canva offer free high-resolution images that you can start taking advantage of.
To further improve your email marketing results, we recommend that you verify your email list, which you can also do for free today.
