The Ultimate Guide To Creating Awesome Gmail Signatures
The Ultimate Guide To Creating Awesome Gmail Signatures is an essential read for anyone considering starting a new Gmail email signature design.
Written by Email Signature Rescue, with over four years experience dedicated explicitly to perfecting HTML email signature design, the guide includes topics such as:
- What kind of email signatures do the various Gmail apps and web clients support
- Reasons to change your current Gmail signature
- Recommended image sizes for your Gmail signature
- Character limits and restrictions in Gmail signatures
- Fonts to use in Gmail signatures
- + a whole lot more
Looking for a better way to market your business or brand? There is no better time than now to brand your Gmail emails.
If you send lots of emails from Gmail throughout the day, why aren't you taking every opportunity to showcase your business and brand?
Whether sending emails to existing clients, potential clients or even just friends and family, it can't be denied that an email signature reinforces your brand and promotes it in every email you send.
An email signature can be the ultimate asset for a business's branding and marketing plans. Take a deeper look inside tips and tricks for creating Gmail signatures in our Ultimate Guide for Creating Awesome Gmail Signatures.
Why add a Gmail signature to your emails?
Any email sent from Gmail without an email signature is a missed marketing opportunity.
The bottom of the email compose window is a big empty advertising space just waiting to be filled. It is indeed ripe for a professional signature. Your business or brand can benefit from seizing all that under-utilized space by adding a professional Gmail signature.
Gmail signatures are an essential part of an overall email marketing strategy
An email signature is the epitome of utilizing every opportunity to promote your brand or business. More so, a professional Gmail signature can set one business apart from the rest. Adding a signature to all emails should definitely be considered in any overall successful email marketing strategy.
Types of email signatures that are supported in Gmail
First of all, Gmail is actually one of the best email clients for HTML email signature support. You can add either a plain text signature or a HTML signature to Gmail on:
- Desktop Webmail Client (Gmail.com)
- iOS App
- Android App
To setup either a plain text or HTML signature in Gmail, simply follow our installation guide.
Reasons to change your current Gmail signature
There's a few reasons to consider changing your current signature in Gmail. As much as you may like your current Gmail signature, is it really pulling it's weight?
Not using HTML
Using a plain text Gmail signature means missing out on all the fun! You can't add links, images or colors. Consider upgrading to a HTML signature to make use of all these. Use your branding color to add colorful highlights to your signature design. Accentuate your business logo with complimenting colors. Add social media icons for aesthetics as well as function and give your email recipients an easy way to find out more about you online.
Not your dream Gmail signature design
A dream Gmail signature should be exactly how you picture it in your head. It might be colorful and fun, modern, cute, professional or corporate in it's design. Whatever your dream signature design is, if it's not your current Gmail signature, change it.
A good email signature should include your name, position/role, company name, link to company website, email address, logo and social media icons. Additionally, more information can be included if you need it, like banner ads, telephone numbers, additional websites, emails and other call to action text and buttons.
Furthermore, you can even use your signature to promote your latest sales, events or offer easy links to online booking software to setup and schedule meetings.
Not tested across all major email clients
Sending test emails to your own Gmail address doesn't cut it. All email clients render HTML differently. Gmail signatures should be tested across all other email clients, apps, OS, screen sizes and devices before being used in a professional environment.
Just like you design, code and test HTML email newsletters to render perfectly in all different email clients, signatures for Gmail also need to be professionally designed, coded and tested too.
The HTML in your signature, might not be look as professional as you think it does. There could be rendering issues when your email recipients receive it. Test it across all major email clients and apps (like we do) using in-house testing or online software like Litmus or Email on Acid to ensure that it looks good, no matter where it's received.
In conclusion, if your current Gmail signature offers all of this, then you're on the right path. If it doesn't, you should consider changing it.
Recommended image sizes for Gmail Signatures
First of all, there is no right or wrong answer to the size of the images you include in your email signature. There is a professional design opinion and that is what's on offer today.
Large Images
As with most things in life, there's a time and place for everything. If you're considering using large images in your Gmail signature design, they can look really great. Just take a look at our Hareee example.
Some other reasons to use large images in Gmail signature include showing off:
- Professional photography
- Property developments and land releases
- Company/team/office photo shoots
- Photos of restaurant seating and menus
Large profile photos, headshots or business logos
From a professional design opinion, there is no place for including really large business logos or profile photos in your Gmail signature. Given it's size, it could be a little startling to your email recipients when they receive a full, life size version of you in their inbox.
Here's a much better way to include a larger profile photo if you really want to. Strangely enough, having a purpose for the large photo to show off your shop or products is a much better idea. It beats just including a really large headshot of yourself.
A logo doesn't need to be huge to stand out and be memorable, after all, check out this nice Gmail signature design with a small logo. It has just as much, if not more impact being small than it would if it were two or three times bigger.
Reasons not to include large images in your Gmail signature
There are many reasons not to use large image in your Gmail signatures.
- Large images cost email recipients bandwidth and time (on slow internet connections) to download them.
- If using retina images, it's best to avoid using really large images altogether. The retina image is already double the size that it's shown as, which means that images aren't just large, they are huge!
- Test to make sure any large images still fit and look nice on mobile devices. All email clients and email apps show images differently. Some might scale the image to a nice size for the screen. Others don't scale images at all, so the size sent, is exactly the size shown on the screen.
Medium Images
Medium size images have a place in good Gmail email signature design. They can be used really well in banner images to show off particular products, events, services or sales. See an example of a good medium sized images below.
Using animated gifs in your Gmail signature
Animated gifs can be used in email signatures and in general, are supported in many modern email clients. Think about it, images that include movement can very effectively draw the attention of the reader's eye right where you want it - on the email signature.
Check out this example of an email signature design with a subtle animated gif. It's not hard to make an animated gif like this. This one is only two frames. Look how it brings a splash of personality and creativity into the design.
You can make your own animated gifs just like this, using Photoshop or any online gif creator like gifmaker.me. First, take some photos of yourself or your employees in a few different poses. Next, add them into the gifmaker.me website. Ta-da, your animated gifs are ready to add to your signature.
Tip: Tick the Bypass Uploader checkbox to upload your gifs
- Tick the "Bypass Uploader" checkbox in the Email Signature Rescue software when uploading your animated gifs.
- Upload animated gifs to any of the image positions.
- Ticking this box keeps the image formatted as an animated gif.
- Save animated gifs as the exact size you would like them to appear in your email signature before uploading it.
Fonts to use in your Gmail signature
The following list of fonts are safe to use in Gmail signatures as they come pre-installed in both macOS and Windows software:
- Arial
- Tahoma
- Verdana
- Trebuchet
- Courier
- Lucida
- Times New Roman
- Georgia
- Palatino
New Windows 10 Fonts
Impact and Arial Black fonts are now also included in Windows 10 and are in OSX/macOS software. Be warned however, because anyone using earlier versions of Windows won't see these fonts.
Why can't I use Google Fonts or Web Fonts in my Gmail signature?
There are ways of including Google fonts and web fonts in HTML email signatures, however if the recipient of your email does not have that exact Google or web font installed in their PC or Mac too, they won't see the email signature like you intend it to be seen.
They will instead see it with a fallback font like Arial or Times New Roman. This can cause all sorts of other problems with line heights and can ultimately throw out the entire Gmail signature design.
Our best recommendation is stick to using the above fonts that come pre-installed in both macOS and Windows software, as mentioned above.
Using only these pre-installed fonts can feel quite restrictive at first, however once you see that great email signature designs can still be achieved with only a few fonts, like these examples on our website, generally designers come around. Not surprisingly, they would rather skip the headaches with the email signature design, than use a pretty font.
Must use a Google Font or Web Font
If a web font is 100% necessary, it may form part of a logo or must be used as part of branding guidelines, you could include the font in an image instead.
Character limits in Gmail signatures
If you've ever installed a signature in Gmail and received the dreaded "sorry the email signature is too long" message, you understand the pain of creating signatures that fit into Gmail. Signatures installed through the native Gmail settings on the desktop version of have a character limit. It's around 12,000 characters. We have installed signatures with a few more than 12,000 characters. As a rough guide, it's around this number.
Need a signature larger than 12,000 characters? In that case, you'll need to download our free Gmail Browser Extension. The browser extension works in both Firefox and Chrome. It injects the Gmail signature's HTML code directly into your compose message, and as such overrides the character restriction.
Tip: Trim down an email signature to fit into Gmail if you want to use it on both iOS and Desktop versions of Gmail
In some cases, trimming down an email signature to fit into Gmail's native signature settings is recommended, given that if you do use the extension, you can't use the signature in other ways. For example, if you want to install your signature in both Gmail on iOS and on Desktop, you will need to install it through Gmail's desktop settings.
The character counter found in the Email Signature Rescue software is handy for this instance. In particular it counts the characters as you create your email signature on screen. If you're really struggling with this, consider joining to easily create a signature that will fit into Gmail.
Measure and track the performance of your Gmail signature
If you have Google Analytics installed, you can in fact, track clicks from your Gmail signature to your website. To do this, you just need to add a custom campaign code to the end of each URL in your email signature's HTML code. Although, HTML code can be tricky. If you would rather seek professional help with coding, the Email Signature Rescue software can take care of this too.
Here's an example of a custom campaign code to add to the end of URLs.
?utm_source=email-signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-signature-campaign To demonstrate the above in use, the entire URL would look something like this:
https://emailsignaturerescue.com?utm_source=email-signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-signature-campaign To see the reports on traffic coming from your email signature, whether using the software or custom coding your own HTML signature, go to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns in your Google Analytics report.
Where to go for help with Gmail signatures on the Google site
Together with this great guide, if you need additional support with any of the features of Gmail email signatures, why not check out Gmail's own help site.
Conclusion
Bypass all the stress of creating Gmail signatures
If just reading this guide made your heart race, why bother designing, coding and testing your own Gmail signature, when you can bypass the stress and download our awesome Gmail email signature templates. Our email signature templates combined with our Email Signature Rescue software to customize them makes creating Gmail signatures a breeze.
Consider joining Email Signature Rescue if you want a quick and easy Gmail signature solution, after all, we have already done all the coding, testing and designing for you. What could be easier than that?
Customize and Create Awesome Gmail Signatures for 45+ email clients
Customize and create your very own awesome Gmail signatures in minutes and install them in over 45 email clients and apps. There are plans for small teams, companies and corporate clients and we also have two unique programs for Agencies and Designers.
