Alt text: what your email says when the pictures don't show
The words that stand in for a picture. Screen readers read them out, and inboxes that hold back images show them in the picture's place.
- 002Alt Text
- Text descriptions of images in emails that display when images can't be loaded, important for accessibility and deliverability.
- Read by
- Screen reader users, and anyone whose inbox hasn't loaded the images
- Added in
- The image settings of every image block in Klaviyo
- Leave empty for
- Spacers, dividers and anything purely decorative
Who actually sees your alt text
Three groups. People using a screen reader, who hear it read out in place of the picture. People whose inbox holds images back until they say yes: Outlook does it by default, and Gmail can be set to ask first. And anyone on a slow connection, for the seconds before your pictures turn up.
Klaviyo's help centre tells you to add alt text to every image for exactly that reason. It takes a few seconds per image. Skip it and those readers get a blank box where your offer should be.
Write what the picture says, not what it looks like
A banner with words baked into it should carry those words as its alt text. A product shot needs the product and the detail that matters. Nobody needs to hear 'image of' first; they already know it's a picture.
| The image | Weak alt text | Better alt text |
|---|---|---|
| A banner with the offer on it | Banner | Free delivery on everything this weekend |
| A product photo | A file name, or nothing | Linen shirt in navy, front view |
| Your logo | Logo | Your shop's name |
| A divider line | Line | Left empty, so screen readers skip it |
Keep it to a sentence. Your email isn't a search results page, so leave the keywords out.
Alt text can't rescue an email that's one big picture
Here's the hard truth: if your whole email is a single image, good alt text gives you one sentence where there should be an email. Put the headline, the offer and the button in live text, and keep pictures for photography. That's the real point behind the text to image ratio.
Then test it. Send yourself the email, switch images off, and read what's left. If you can still tell what it's selling and where to click, you're done.
Related terms
FAQs
Does alt text help email deliverability?
Not much on its own. Mailbox providers judge the sender first, and an email that's all pictures is still all pictures, whatever its alt text says. Alt text's real job is people: the reader using a screen reader and the one whose inbox hasn't loaded your images. Put the message in live text and let alt text cover the pictures.
Do Shopify product images need alt text too?
Yes, and there it does a second job. Shopify gives every product image an alt text field, and search engines read it to understand what's in the picture. Describe the product plainly: the name, the colour, the angle. It helps shoppers using screen readers on your store just as much as it does in email.
Should decorative images have alt text?
They should have an empty one, so screen readers skip them. Spacers, dividers and background flourishes don't mean anything, and hearing divider read aloud between every section is just noise. Anything that does carry meaning, a product, an offer, your logo, gets words.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
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