The email signature is often overlooked as a way of promoting your brand, growing your audience, and generally looking more professional.
Once upon a time, an email signature was simply the standard sign-off you added to the bottom of every message. But times have changed, and now many people use their email signatures for much more than just signing off. It’s become a space in which you can promote your business, highlight important info you want recipients to see, or even add a bit of personality.
One thing you can add to your professional email signature is social media icons. These icons are great because they allow users to access your social profiles with the simple click of a button (rather than having to type in the URL).
Table of Contents
Find an icon of the social network
To add social media icons to your email signature, you’ll need an icon of the social network. Here are some tips/suggestions for finding the right one:
- Make sure it’s the right size. If you’re going to use a text-based icon (like Twitter’s bird), make sure it’s as large as possible. This will ensure that people can see it clearly, even on mobile devices where space is limited by smaller screens.
- Make sure it’s the right color. For most social media logos, this means selecting a bright shade of blue or red—often making them resemble icons used in Windows or OS X operating systems—but other colors may work if they’re easy to spot from across your screen and not too distracting from your message or company branding colors.
- Make sure it’s the right shape: Most icons are circular; however, some services now have square badges instead (such as Facebook). You’ll want to check before adding yours so that everything looks consistent together when placed side by side!
Insert the icon
- To add the icon by using the embed code
- Click on Signatures in your Gmail inbox or open an email you have already sent and click “Edit”.
- Under the “Write an email” area, click on the drop-down menu next to “Insert signature” and select which social media platform you want to add (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).
- Once selected, you will see several options for how to display your social media icon(s) in your email signature such as via copy-and-paste code, drag-and-drop uploads from another device, or uploading directly from a URL. You may need this information depending on how your company’s IT department has set up its systems so be sure to ask them if needed before proceeding with this step!
Link to social media profiles
Go to the Accounts page, which you can find in your Gmail settings. Click the link to connect a social media profile, and then follow the instructions on the website.
Connecting to social media profiles is easy! You’ll see a list of all your connected accounts; click or tap one to edit its details and select what information will show up in your email signature as a result of connecting it. You can also add multiple accounts by selecting Add More Accounts at the bottom of this page (and then repeating these steps for each account).
Adding an event-triggering
To make it work, you’ll need to add a bit of code that will tell Gmail when to show the social media icon. That’s called event-triggering. It’s like setting up an alarm clock or timer, but instead of ringing at a certain time, you’re telling the browser what should happen when someone takes action in a given app or service (like clicking on one of your social media links). You can use this same technology to show or hide other things on your website as well: display ads when someone clicks on an ad unit, offer discounts and coupons based on shopping history, or recent purchases.
You can choose from two types of event triggers: pageview triggers—which activate when someone views an HTML page—and user action triggers—which activate based on what users do within an app or service like Facebook Messenger.
What are the other ways/modes to add social media icons to the Gmail email signature?
There are a few ways to add social media icons to Gmail email signature, but here are three of the best:
Use a Google Chrome extension. The Add Social Icons extension for Gmail will help you add social media icons to your Gmail signature in just a couple of clicks. You can choose from over 30 popular social networks and include up to four different links per icon.
Create an HTML-based signature. If you’re comfortable creating a custom HTML-based signature in Gmail, then this is the option for you! Just head over to the Social Media section on your account settings page and follow the instructions on how to create your own custom HTML code snippet. This option is particularly useful if you want more control over which networks appear in your signature and how they look.
Use an app like Signature Generator (available for both Android and iOS). The Signature Generator app lets you quickly generate a custom email signature that includes any number of icons from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+.
How do we add my own logo or image?
In addition to social media icons, you can also customize your email signature with a logo or image of your choice. To do so, click on “Add Image” at the bottom of the editor window and upload an image from your computer or just drag and drop an image from your desktop into the window. You can then resize it by dragging its corners until it fits perfectly into your signature. If you want to add more than one image, simply repeat these steps again and again until you have added all desired images.
Benefits
The use of social media icons in email signatures is a great way to make your emails stand out. The benefits of using social media icons include greater brand awareness, increased traffic and sales, and more engagement from your audience.
1. It makes your emails more visible
The first benefit of using social media icons in your email signatures is that it makes them more visible. When you add an icon to your signature, it appears next to any other images that you may have — such as a logo or an image of yourself — which means that it will be more noticeable than text alone would be. This can help you increase brand recognition and make sure that people see your name whenever they open an email from you.
2. It drives traffic to your website
The second benefit of using social media icons in your email signatures is that they can drive traffic back to your website by encouraging people to share the content of their emails on Facebook and Twitter. For example, if someone sends you an article about healthy eating and exercise, they might click on the Facebook icon next to their name so that they can share it with their friends online; this could then lead them back to your blog or another website where they could read more articles.
3. Build Your Brand
Another benefit of using social media icons in your email signature is that it helps build your brand. People may not know who you are yet, but if they see your name pop up in their inbox multiple times a week over time, they will start associating that name with quality content and information. If they receive an article from you each week with valuable content and interesting ideas, they will begin to recognize your name as one worth paying attention to rather than just another business owner trying to sell them something or get them involved in some kind of marketing campaign or promotion.
4. Increase Engagement Rate
When consumers engage with your company on social media, this creates an opportunity for them to learn more about what you do and interact with other customers who use your product or service. This can help increase brand loyalty and encourage repeat sales through word-of-mouth advertising and recommendations from existing customers.
5. Increase trust between you and your contacts
If you want people to feel comfortable contacting you in case they need any information regarding your business or product/service, then it is important that they know how easy it will be for them to reach out to you via different channels (email, phone or social networks). This way they can get in touch with you whenever they want without having to worry about several communication channels because all of them are present on their computer screen at the same time.
Final words
That’s it! These steps should help you add icons to your email signature. Remember, though, that the exact process and look of your signature will depend on the email service provider you use. So if you don’t have Gmail—or just want to see how other services handle icons—definitely check out our piece on how to create a professional signature using different email clients!
After all this, what are some things you can do with a great-looking signature? Well, how about sharing it with a friend or coworker who might benefit from these tips? Or try adding our Infographic Maker tool to your signature so that recipients can easily access it online? Either way, we hope you’re feeling ready to wow everyone with your new email signatures! Get your email signature with designhill email signature today!
An author of DigitalGpoint, We have published more articles focused on blogging, business, lifestyle, digital marketing, social media, web design & development, e-commerce, finance, health, SEO, travel.
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