Taking your email signatures from blah to bling is a simple way to set your messages apart from others, and it can be especially important if you need branded emails for your business. If you’ve ever seen one of those fancy email signatures that have Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking links, then you know what we’re talking about. Try as you might, but you won’t find any option in OS X’s Mail app to create image and link-based signatures. Fortunately, you don’t need any special software to pull this trick off. Continue reading to learn how it’s done.
Typically, your email signature in OS X Mail might look like something below. A little bland, isn’t it? We wanted our signature to be comprised of three main sections: name and title, titles and links to our websites, and then icons and links to our social networks Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and AIM.
The first step in accomplishing this is to open a new, blank email in Mail. In the message body, format your signature the way you’d like it to be shown. Use colors, and all of the formatting options available to you in the Font panel (Command + T).
To add links, select and right-click on the text you wish to be a link, and then navigate to Link > Add Link. In the URL field, enter the address to the site that you wish to link. Click OK when you’re done.
Now that we have the basic layout done, we’ll add the icons and links to Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and AIM. To do this, you’ll need the following images:
Right-click on each of the images above and choose “Save Image As...” in the pop up menu.
Add these images to the new message by opening them in Preview, and pressing Command + A (Select all), and then going to the new message and pressing Command + V (Paste). Paste the images one by one, making sure that you don’t just drag and drop the images into the new message window.
When you’re done adding the images, select the image and navigate to Edit > Add Link. In the pop up URL dialog, add the link to your profile on the selected service.
To add a link to your AIM account, you’ll use the following URL snippet in the URL field for the icon:
aim:GoIm?screenname=x
Enter your username in place of the x after the equal sign. This will cause a new instant message to be created and addressed to you when someone clicks on the link.
Once you are done tweaking your new email signature, copy the entire signature from the new message body, and then navigate to Mail > Preferences > Signatures. Create a new signature by clicking on the plus sign (+), and then paste in your newly created signature. It’s now ready for use in your new email messages.
Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
Kenny_JK
August 18, 2012 at 1:20pm
You should check brandmymail.com , which has full control over email signature and overall template :)
RobK
May 08, 2012 at 8:32pm
Ya this doesn't really seem as if it was thought through. Different mail systems and clients will handle this a million different ways (as I found out). Fancy? Maybe. For use by a professional who relies on the constancy their communiques? Hardly.
irvghady
May 08, 2012 at 3:23pm
So I did EXACTLY what you said and added the links to each image. I tested it out and sent myself the e-mail and I found that the formatting gets screwed up on the right column a bit and the links do not work at all. I click on the twitter icon and instead of opening twitter or linked in, etc, it takes me to PREVIEW and shows the little icon there.
Help please?
raven029
May 07, 2012 at 10:49pm
I'm with chirpity. Please don't attach images to you signature. Just because you can does not make it a good idea.
One of the biggest annoyances (and I use Apple Mail) is to to have to figure out what emails have a real attachment I should consider important and which emails have signature attachments that are utterly worthless.
If you feel compelled to make a billboard out of your signature, please host the signature/images/artistic creation on your website & have your email target it. You might also want to have a text version of it for those folks who have no desire to look at all the pretty colors.
chirpity
May 07, 2012 at 7:24pm
Another point, how many new people do you send emails to every day? 1, 2, maybe 3? The same people DO NOT appreciate getting your same contact info over and over and over again. You send it to them once (even as a Vcard), they add you to their address book. Done.
They never have to see your contact info until they need to. And it's just a click of a button away.
chirpity
May 07, 2012 at 7:21pm
This is a plea to everyone reading this article: please DO NOT put images in your email signatures. It causes nothing but problems for those on the receiving end:
1. Increased disk space needed to store emails.
2. Replying to certain online services through an email will upload your signature images and cause all sorts of organization issues (in Basecamp and the like).
3. This trend began in the 90s and should have ended when people stopped using tables to build websites. That's about the same level of annoyance. People get yelled at for using tables, but people love to throw images in their signatures.
4. There are email clients that will not display images until told to do so. Or in some cases won't display them at all.Please stop. That is what your website is for. That is where you put your little Facebook and Twitter icons. A simple text link in an email is all you need.
drdre74
May 07, 2012 at 5:59pm
I added the images did the links and when i sent myself a email the links didn't work. The images opened up sketchbook pro as a image png not as a link for safari. Now that I look again none of my links work. Now even my website!
RobK
May 07, 2012 at 9:44am
I thought this really looked cool so I tried it....
Just FYI. Recipients using Gmail get a mess with all the images as attachments. This is a big deal. Was this tested on anything other than Apple Mail?
apstewart
May 06, 2012 at 3:46pm
I like the idea behind this, but I have always wanted to minimize signatures as much as possible. Have you seen the "Please consider the environment before printing" and "For the intended recipient only" nonsense that runs on for lines and lines? Drives me nuts. :)
Anyway, my version of this useful article would be: i.imgur.com/FRwQI.jpg
MacMind
May 05, 2012 at 2:25pm
One more necessary step in this process:
When in the Signatures window of Mail Preferences, be sure to uncheck the box underneath right pane of the Signature window that says, "Always match my default message font." If you do not uncheck this box *before* you paste in your newly formatted signature, all your formatted font choices will be reduced to the default font.
tfindlay
May 04, 2012 at 10:32am
When I copy and paste in an image, select it, and right click on it there is no LInk option in the menu. Instead I get the attachment options menu.
corybohon
May 04, 2012 at 11:48am
Putting links with images is a little different than when you link the text. As the article states:
"When you’re done adding the images, select the image and navigate to Edit > Add Link. In the pop up URL dialog, add the link to your profile on the selected service."
