Animated Email Signatures – Do It or Don’t?

Animated Email Signatures – Do It or Don’t?

animated-email-signatures-do-it-or-dont

Animated email signatures are becoming increasingly popular – and with good reason! They can give a very nice effect on the email sign-off and be a good way of directing attention to a campaign or theme. Quite often our customers ask us about whether or not animated email signatures are a good idea. There are some important things to consider. In this blog post, we will go through the main pros and cons of animated email signatures and show examples of designs.

Are animations in email signature a good idea at all?

We love animations here at Xink and we think they can really make your signatures look great. In fact, animations can convey your brand personality and stories in a whole new way.

We recommend that you keep your contact information animation-free. Some people do not like moving objects and find them annoying. So to keep a professional style in the most important information of the signature – i.e. who you are and how to reach you – you should keep that “clean”. This is obviously also to make sure that all recipients are able to see this information, no matter what email client, version, and device they read your emails on.

Here is an example of how we converted our logo into an animation in our team email signatures:

Will animated email signatures work in all email clients?

The short answer to this question is: No – but almost. A few email clients, like Outlook for PC, simply don’t support animations and therefore they will only show the first frame or a red X. On the other hand, animations work just fine on Outlook for Mac and webmail systems like Gmail and Yahoo. It also works for Office 365 in both the desktop client, mobile app, and webmail client.

If you use Outlook for PC, you must create an alternative to the animation. It can just be a still frame with the most important information to make sure that your email signature shows a nice image and not a red X.

Also, make sure to update to the latest version of Outlook and enable “Play animated GIFs”, see our guide.

Are there any limitations in size, colors, etc.?

No, there are no limitations, technically speaking. Make sure to keep a color scheme and design that is consistent with your brand and tone of voice. Do keep the animation short, precise, and easy to understand. You don’t want a really heavy email signature that will take ages to load.

What type of content works well as an animation?

If you use campaigns as part of your email signatures, this is a great place to use animations. Not only is it a great way to draw attention to news, share an offer, send a greeting, or perhaps showcase an award that your company has won. It will also make your email signatures – and your brand – stand out from the rest.

With Xink, you can create custom groups for your email signatures. This means that you don’t have to use the same email signature for all audiences, locations, departments, etc. It is very simple to set up different rules to target the right audiences with your content. Take a closer look at how to set up rules with Xink.

Now that the holiday season is coming up, perhaps it would be a good time to test some different animated email signatures? It is a great time of year to be a bit more creative and put a smile on people’s faces – right from your email signatures. Here are a few examples of Xink’s animated email signatures from the previous holiday seasons.

More Information on Animations in Email Signatures

If you want to know more about Gifs and animations in email signatures, just reach out to us – no obligations! You can catch us on Live Chat here on our website, on our Help Center, or shoot us an email at support@xink.io.

We would also like to highlight this great guide from Litmus on using GIFs in emails as marketing elements.

Brand Consistency Through Email Signature