Email Marketing suggestions? Text or images?

I've had mixed success with email marketing lately and was wondering if anyone else had experience using text based email newsletters or html templates with images. I use Microsoft exchange and outlook and by default it does not show images for email newsletters. Is this the norm? Html emails with images don't look good in my outlook program. Maybe purely text based email marketing campaigns are better. Thoughts?

Also, what social media marketing icons do you put in your email signatures or newsletters? Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter or others? Thanks in advance for any comments!

 

Hi, the best way to have a successful email marketing is to have a good mix between content and layout. You can use images, but only if it is really necessary (like a logo). Don't put text in images because the images are mostly always blocked, and there is only a low percentage that actually click on the 'show images' warning of their mail client.
I prefer styling with html tables and basic css because a email client does not render advanced html and css as browsers do.

Which social media marketing icons you use depends on the context of the mailing. If you are B2C then you probably link with a Facebook icon to the brand fanpage and to the twitter account. If you are B2B then you also link to your LinkedIn.