Animated Email Signatures: Bring Your Emails to Life
Making your emails stand out can be a big challenge. In most communication, you don’t want to be using designed emails because they can cause it to feel cluttered and distract from the main message.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use little elements if you want your email to be more engaging, show a bit of personality, and direct attention to the most important content information. That’s what an animated email signature can help you accomplish.
But what is an animated signature? Why should you use it? And how can you add it to your email provider? Let’s go over everything you need to know about using GIFs for email signatures below. But first, let’s figure out what an animated GIF is.
What is an animated GIF?
An animated GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a series of images that are shown in quick sequence, creating a short animation on an infinite loop. The technology has been around for a long time and has become an integral part of online communication and even meme culture over the past decades.
Today, GIFs are widely used to express emotions in chats, illustrate concepts, add visual interest, share ideas, and in a variety of other situations. In fact, GIFs can even be used to create animated email signatures that can make emails more engaging and even contribute to your email signature marketing and branding efforts.
The pros & cons of using animated GIFs in email signatures
Using an email signature GIF is an intriguing option to consider. But before you go creating the perfect GIF for your brand, let’s look at some of the main pros and cons that will allow you to make an informed decision about whether it’s the right option to add this simple animation.
Pros
- Eye-catching: In a plain text email, any motion will naturally draw the eye, which can be great when you want people to notice something, even if this just a few seconds. In this case, it will draw the eye to your email signature, where you can have your details, contact info, links, and even a promotional animated banner. You can add an animated logo, animated face photo or animated banner to increase engagement og your email signature.
- Branding: Another reason to use email signature animation is that it helps reinforce your brand. By having your business logo, colors, and other branding elements as part of a moving GIF, you will make your brand more memorable and improve the chances of it being recognized.
- Showcase your product: If you want a more practical way to use GIFs for an email signature, you can add a short clip of how your product works and use it as a part of your email marketing campaigns. This mini-demo can remove some of the friction for prospective customers, show your product in action, and emphasize its value.
- Add personality: Finally, using email signature GIFs is an excellent way to inject some personality into your emails. Even something as simple as a funny GIF, like slight movement of kittens in email signature, can lighten the mood and show your sense of humor, making you more approachable to every recipient.
Cons
- Distracting: When using a GIF in your email signature, there’s always the risk of the GIF becoming a distraction and taking away from your main message. That’s why it’s important to use a GIF signature maker with proven templates that don’t overwhelm the signature with moving elements.
- Loading times: Another possible drawback of an animated email signature is that it can worsen your email loading times. GIFs can take up too much space, so be mindful about which ones you use and how much of an impact they will have on the reader’s experience.
- Professionalism: While email signature animation may not seem like a big deal, it may not work in all scenarios. In some industries or positions, even an innocent GIF may be perceived as unprofessional, so you want to carefully consider if it’s appropriate in your situation.
- Compatibility: Not all email clients may support an animated email signature, and that might cause the entire signature to be displayed incorrectly and be caught by spam filters. However, most of today’s main email clients support GIFs, so this is becoming less of an issue.
How to add a GIF signature in Gmail
You can add a GIF to your Gmail email signature just as you would any image:
1. Click on the Gear icon in the top right corner and select “See all settings.”
2. Navigate to the Signature section and choose to either “Create new” or edit an existing email signature.
3. Click the Image icon in the editor toolbar to upload your GIF.
4. Once you position your GIF where you want it, click “Save changes” to save and exit.
How to add a GIF to an Outlook email signature
The process of adding a GIF on Outlook is relatively similar to the one on Gmail:
1. Open your Outlook account and go to “Settings” > “Compose and reply,” and find the “Email signature” section.
2. Click “New” or select an existing signature you want to edit.
3. In the Signature editing toolbar, select the “Image” icon and upload the GIF you want to use in your email signature.
4. Position the GIF as you want in your email signature and click “Save” once you’re done.
Key considerations for using animated GIFs in email signatures
Adding an animated email signature can be a useful addition to your email communication, but it’s important to consider a few key questions that will help ensure your signature GIF looks good, displays properly, and serves its purpose.
Let’s go over a few of the most important questions you may have below.
What is the best format for an animated email signature?
GIF remains the supreme option when it comes to animated images that work well for email signatures. They’ve been used for more than four decades, are supported by the vast majority of email clients, and are relatively easy to make.
There are other formats, such as ANPG (Animated PNG), that could be considered. And ANPG does come with more colors and transparency. But it isn’t as widely used, and thus may not display properly on even the major email clients yet.
Which email platforms fully support animated GIFs?
Most major email platforms don’t have any issues when displaying animated GIFs. This includes Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, Thunderbird, and others.
However, it’s important to consider that this also depends on the client’s security settings and even the platform being used. For example, the Outlook desktop app may only display the first frame of the GIF.
How can I design and create my own animated GIF for email signatures?
The best way to create your own custom interactive email signature with animated GIF is to use professional tools like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, or Canva to create a GIF using static images. Alternatively, you can also use a variety of free online tools, such as GIF makers, to turn videos or images into GIFs, but these typically come with fewer customization possibilities.
When designing a GIF from scratch, start with what you want to convey, then plan out your visuals, arrange frames, optimize to ensure it runs smoothly, and save your end result in the GIF format keeping in mind that a file size shouldn’t be big.
Can mobile email signatures include animated GIFs?
In recent years, mobile email apps have become much better at displaying GIFs in emails. Apple Mail on iOS offers excellent GIF support, and you will usually see no issues on most Android apps as well. The only slight exception might be the Outlook app, which can sometimes end up showing only the first frame of the GIF.
The key to remember is that whether you create your GIF email signature from scratch or use a free animated email signature creator, you should always thoroughly test all your email signatures to ensure they look good and display correctly on all devices.
Are there industries where animated GIFs in email signatures might not be suitable?
Yes, industries with stricter standards, such as law, healthcare, or finance companies, may not be ideal for using GIFs in email signatures. In all scenarios, it’s best to consider your audience and industry norms to ensure that the GIF doesn’t become detrimental to your professional image and don’t leave bad impression.
What’s more, it’s just as crucial to consider the individual relationships with the people you’re emailing, as a playful GIF may be appropriate for a colleague but not someone you’re emailing for the first time.
Bottom line
Using animated email signatures can be a great way to enhance your emails and make them more engaging, but only if used in the right context and in a way that’s appropriate. Even more importantly, you must ensure that the GIF displays correctly and works well with the overall email signature design.
That’s why it’s always a good idea to use a professional email signature generator like Newoldstamp, if you want to create an animated html signature. It offers a wide variety of professionally designed email signature templates that look good on all devices.
