Yes, another month is upon us, which means that it’s time for another installment of “Images Blocked Email of the Month”!

This post is different, though. After several months of bashing email marketers for not optimizing their emails for image suppression, I thought it would be refreshing to highlight and praise some email marketers that are doing a good job in this area.

Enter Groupon, whose shopping cart design I praised in 2010. Their emails look pretty darn good with images suppressed, don’t you think? [Click thumbnail to enlarge]. I think a good indicator of a well-designed email is that it doesn’t look vastly different with or without images.

Notice how the example email’s layout is clean and easy to scan. Columns, rows, and spacing is intact. Click-able call to action links are intuitive, and the image-less containers still look professional. In fact, they make me want to download the images because I know from the rest of the online Groupon experience that the images tend to be high-quality.

My only criticism is that the call to action links (“View Deal”) could be more prominent and obvious.

Reminder

Email marketers: Assume that your emails will be viewed with images blocked. Test your emails with images blocked. Put yourself in the recipients shoes, with images blocked, and ask: What’s in it for me?

Seen any emails in your inbox (or preview pane) that looked “FUBAR” with images blocked? Email them to me for next month’s feature…