Manage Email Signatures centrally from your Desktop - For All Users

Jesper Frier

4 Tips that will make your email signature design work great

You received the graphic design from your designer and are now in the process of validating the HTML and test the design on major email clients.
Your graphic designer has an eye for what looks great. But knowing what looks great and knowing what works great in email signatures are two different things.
Many designers are unfamiliar with the quirks and limitations of email, and it's your job to steer them away from 4 common email-design mistakes.
Or please ask us to help you test your design on all the major email clients out there.

Idea

How to test your email signature design on all major email clients. With this Service, you save hours of anguish!

I'm speaking from experience. Over the last years, I've received numerous emails with design questions where I've had to stand firm in a clash between beauty and workability.

The Top of the Email is Not for Pretty Images

Your designer might want to put your company logo or something eye-catching in the top-left corner of your email. Bad idea.
This section of your email might be all that readers see in the "preview pane". You don't have a whole lot of room or a whole lot of time to convince readers to open your message or scroll down.
And from the users point of view, they will have to click their mouse below the image to write in the email body area.

Put your logo or pretty images beneath the primary message area.
Keep the number of linked images to a minimum

Major email clients block images by default. This means that unless readers specifically turn images on, all they'll see is empty boxes where your images should be.
What's more, different clients block images in different ways. When Gmail blocks images, it displays Alt tags, visible text where you can at least explain what the reader isn't seeing. When Hotmail blocks these same images, it blocks the Alt tags, too. Then there's Outlook 2007, which blocks background images, even when images are turned on.
This can be hard for email-inexperienced designers to grasp, because it's at odds with their everyday Web-design reality.
Web sites are becoming increasingly more graphical because browsers are faster. Web-design quality is improving as people push the design envelope, using the latest technology, pretty graphics and eye-catching elements. But in email signatures, you're working with a platform that is 15 years old with really elementary HTML.

Consider these Pros and Cons before using embedded images in your email signatures.
Any critical branding elements must be created in text

Because your graphics may never be seen, don't put anything that readers really need to see in an image.
That means your contact details, company name and primary call to action when using Campaign Manager.
Critical elements should be text-based HTML, tricked out with fonts, borders and colors to look pretty. Then, if you want to reinforce that information in a graphic, feel free.
If you must use CSS, then use in-line CSS

In the Web world, designers rely on CSS to specify colors, fonts and other aspects of the layout. But it doesn't work the same way for email clients, and your designer might not have a clue.
Designers typically create an external CSS file with all the layout information, and then they link to it in the header area of the HTML code.
Since major email clients (incl. Outlook 2007) don't honor CSS in the way that designers are accustomed to, they must code all fonts, colors and other details in-line. In other words, they must specify formatting instructions throughout the email, table cell by table cell, paragraph by paragraph.

When you use your build-in Cockpit email signature designer, or link your designer to this online designer, you will have no rendering problems on major email clients.

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</Jesper> | Manage Email Signatures from your Desktop | Test Email Signature in All In-boxes | Email Signature Showcase