How to Add Animated GIFs to Email (Klaviyo, Mailchimp & More)

Good news: to your email platform, an animated GIF is just an image file. If you can add a photo to a campaign, you can add a GIF the exact same way. Here’s the process and the pitfalls.

Step 1 — Make an email-ready GIF

Create your product GIF and keep it under ~1MB and around 600px wide. With StoreGIF, paste your store URL or upload photos, choose the “Smaller file” quality preset, and download the .gif.

Step 2 — Add it in Klaviyo

• Open your campaign or flow email in the editor.
• Drag in an Image block (or edit an existing one).
• Upload your .gif — Klaviyo keeps it animated.
• Link the image to your product or collection URL.

Step 3 — Add it in Mailchimp

• In the Content builder, drag an Image block into the layout.
• Upload the .gif to the content studio and insert it.
• Add a link and descriptive alt text.

Any other ESP works the same way

The pattern is identical in Shopify Email, Omnisend, Brevo, HubSpot, Constant Contact and the rest: find the image block, upload the .gif, and it stays animated. There’s no special “GIF” setting to hunt for — because your platform is simply hosting an image, the animation is baked into the file itself.

If your ESP lets you set a poster or fallback image, remember that some clients (Outlook on Windows) will only ever show your GIF’s first frame, so it should already read as a complete image.

Three things people get wrong

• Forgetting Windows Outlook — it shows only the first frame, so make that frame stand alone.
• Oversized files — a multi-megabyte GIF loads slowly or gets clipped; keep it under ~1MB.
• No alt text — always add it as a fallback for blocked or unsupported images.

FAQ