What Is The Best Email Signature Image Size?
1. What are the Most Common Mistakes in Email Signature Design?
2. What Size Should be Email Signature Banner Image?
3. How to Reduce the Size of Image for Email Signature
4. What is the Good Email Signature Image Shape?
Perhaps you have spent hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars and many hours developing the brand design of your company. Usually, it consists of several small components: brand name, color palette, graphic arts, typography, logo, and others. But have you ever wondered how many people can actually see it, and how to easily increase this number?
Adding an email signature design to your brand elements will increase recognition and the company's popularity itself. However, it shouldn't be just a good email signature, but the one which will put your best business face forward and provide the highest results on investment. It is easier than you think! Nevertheless, creating email signature templates, many companies make silly mistakes that play against their brand. Before moving on to the article main topic, let's look at them.
What are the Most Common Mistakes in Email Signature Design?
1. Forgot to optimize the email signature size mobile devices. Most companies build only one resolution for desktop but do not adapt it for smartphones and tablets. It significantly reduces the target audience, as the smartphone is considered the most used device across the world now.
2. Have more than 2 large images. Do not add more than two large size images in a good email signature, because some users with mobile internet will not be able to download this file at all. Also, 3-4 pictures in your large email signature may look too intrusive.
3. Add an image that doesn't connect the context. Any images in email should be brand-styled and make sense. If you add banner images, they should have a hyperlink to the external website.
4. Do not use animations. Animations are always fresh and exciting. But as a rule, they don’t work in email signature marketing. Also, some email clients turn GIF animations to still images. For example, you have an animation of your cat's head moving, and your recipients will see just a static blurry image. It’s not the best start, right?
5. Use the one small image as the full signature. It is not enough. Just your photo or logo without text can automatically send your letter to the spam folder. The text is always essential to the recipient. In addition to the images in email signatures, you need to have a texted "Call to Action" technique.
6. Don't attach images in an email at all. Pictures are vital for brand promotion, and not to add a graphic always means losing potential customers. A beautiful photograph or picture attracts attention = trades high.
7. Design the wrong email signature image size. In this case, size of email signature is the matter! The picture shouldn't be too small or too large. In other words, the email signature image size should be IDEAL for attracting every potential buyer.
*All email signatures will be converted to HTML, therefore you must use only "web-safe" fonts in the design.
What Size Should be Email Signature Banner Image?
So we came to an email signature image size main topic to answer the most critical question - "What is an Ideal Size?"
The primary purpose of the image is to help your letter to advertise your company to new customers. That's why all your graphics should be unique, colorful, and brand-styled. And as we already have mentioned below: "Size matters!"
- The full email signature dimension (or email signature size in pixels) should be no more than 800 pixels in width and between 90 and 150 pixels in height, with a maximum quality resolution of 100 dpi.
- The best signature size in pixels should be around 300-400 pixels in width and 70–100 pixels in height (with approximate 70 dpi).
- The email signature picture used as an email banner size a max-width of 700 pixels, and a max-height of 100 pixels.
- The ideal Gmail signature size would be a little smaller: about 80 pixels in height, and up to 200 pixels wide.
- The file of the email signature shouldn’t exceed 15kb (when optimized for web).
How to Reduce the Size of Image for Email Signature
If you have already worked on your email signature templates, you should know that they usually come in larger sizes than you expected. But since the email signature dimensions must be of specific standards, we have to look for ways to reduce. Here are a few effective options:
- Compress large profile photos. It is one of the fastest and easiest ways to reduce email signature size. Photoshop is the most popular program for this purpose. Through it, you can make the large image much smaller in size (kb) without losing any quality. It's called lossless compression. Thus, you can reduce a picture from 60 kb to 10 kb or even less, and it will look almost the same.
- Do not use the banner, if you do not have to. A large email signature always has a banner that spans the bottom of your sig to give a piece of extra information to your recipients. It is a great way to advertise a company's brand or promote any product. However, they always take up a lot of room in the signature email signature and usually have a large email footer size. Therefore, use banners only when it is necessary.
- Add a small image. Another great option is to use lower resolution images in email signatures. Smaller pictures look way better, because they still give information and at the same time, look more elegant. Also, the larger the image, the longer it will load for your letter recipients. So, these advantages are distinct. But even when you use smaller resolution images, you still should compress them.
- Use only JPEG or PNG images. There are only two main types of pictures that should be used in the good email signature. PNG is always the best type for brand logos and pictures with transparent background. For the personal photo, it is better to use JPEG, because you need to show more color and details. GIF type will 95% have a higher size than acceptable. If you have a file in another format, you can use the best free image converter to save it in JPEG or PNG formats.
What is the Good Email Signature Image Shape?
It is difficult to give a definite answer since each image has its own ideal shape. So, let's look at all kinds of images that can be added to email signature templates and their possible forms.
1. Personal photo. It is probably one of the most familiar images that you can meet in any email sig. This technique creates the effect of trust, because when we see a high-quality person's photo, it gets much more pleasant to communicate. For a personal photo. it is better to use a typical email signature forms: circle or square, which is simple but familiar and understandable to everyone.
2. Logo - the shape of your logo. As a rule, company logos come in all sorts of different forms. So, you do not need to invent anything extra, just leave your logo as it is.
3. Banner. For any type of banner, it is best to use similar to a rectangle shape. But also, it can be any oblong form, for example, an oval, ellipse, diamond, or something more unusual, like a ribbon or even an infinity sign.
4. Background image. According to the template, it should have a rectangular shape, and usually white. Although you can play with color, we would advise using the same form.
6. Other images. The standard shapes are a circle, square, rectangle, sometimes a triangle, a pentagon, a hexagon. You can design whatever you want, all in your hands. But don't overdo it, your email signature should stay elegant and clear.
Final Conclusion
Based on our findings the best image size for email signature, we can confidently say that large email signature image size is not the best option. There is just no necessity to design an email signature file, which is more than 20-15 kb. A large image with a little text can easily ensure the migration of your letter from the inbox to the spam folder. When a smaller image will look advantageous and intriguingly draw the recipient's attention.
Before creating your brand new email signature through a template, be sure to compress the image. There is even a theory that file compression can help the global environment. Hard to say how true this is, but it will 100% improve your business marketing company. At least, your recipients will faster download the email and get the right resolution picture.
