Tips and Examples for using (the new) HTML Signatures in Gmail

Update 7 August 2010: Don’t Use Images in Gmail’s signature!

Gmail now natively supports rich signatures (with images, font size and colors, links and so on) . Just go to 'Settings' and customize your signature under the 'Signature' section. Here is an image of my new signature:

Some tips

Finding icons: Want to find icons to put next to your details? Here is a special Google search (opens in a new tab) that will help you find small icons. Just type the name of the services you're looking for in the search box, and you'll get icons size images you can copy and add to your signature.

More than one signature : Note that you can set up more then one signature if you have more than one email address associated with your Gmail account.

Track website traffic: If you have a website, you can monitor how many people get to it from the link in your signature. To do that, you need to tag the link, so that Google analytics (if that's your analytics application) will recognize the visit source. For example – to tag the link in my signature, I could add this tag:

http://www.productivewise.com?utm_source=MailSignature

To monitor clicks to your site, just replace the base  address in the example above, and add the link to your signature.

But there is a problem with using images

Note, that until the recipient actively  allows images in the email to be download, your signature might look somthing like that (tested on Outlook 2007):

That is, instead of the icons you've added to your signature, they might see just a placeholder….

Related posts:

1. Don’t Use Images in Gmail’s signature!
2. Roundup – Gmail, Google Reader, and other Google Tips and Practices
3. Some Tips About Web Stuff – June 2010
4. 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes
5. Create a New Email With the Title, Content, and a Link to a Webpage Using a Gmail Bookmarklet