A completely overlooked aspect of an email is the signature at the end of it. Most businesses tend to forget that signatures are also part of an email\’s content. In fact, if you construct your email signature correctly, it can do a lot of benefits for you.
But in this article, we’re not talking about just any email signature, we’re going to talk about the fun and animated professional-looking email signatures.
If you\’re thinking about whether investing time and effort in animated email signatures is worth it, spare some time reading this article. Everything you need to know about animated email signatures is here.
Defining Animated Email Signatures And How It Came To Be
In the digital world, two things are constant – business opportunities and innovation.
As for animated email signatures, it has fallen to the latter category.
It’s the evolution of the static and common email signature. It’s the innovation of gaining attention through emails.
These animated signatures are also called GIF email signatures. As you can remember, there was a time that GIF images were a hit. Wherein it almost had everyone’s attention. People were laughing and sharing their favorite GIFs on different social media platforms.
But as time passed, GIFs went beyond cat videos and funny video clips. Businesses started to pick up that it was a good form to educate or show something to their customers.
Close thought that it was a good way to show how easy it is to use their predictive dialers.
Process.st showed how fast their workflow software by sharing a glimpse of it via GIF.
If you value your online business, you need to think of ways on how to engage your audience.
Given the high engagement rate of animated images, marketers thought of ways on how to incorporate this in their marketing strategies.
And a great way to test this out is through emails. Email marketing is still the top marketing channel for a lot of businesses.
PaperStreet even mentioned that “You can build long-term relationships with this cost-effective form of permission-based marketing.”
And with this, marketers started adding GIFs to their email content.
Doing this made emails have a higher conversion and engagement rate. Just take a look at how Dell used their GIF to show the customers their new product.
Even Apple used this to let their audience know about their online events:
It’s no secret how eye-catching these animated images are. This was way better than plain old save-the-date texts.
As mentioned earlier, change is constant in the digital world. And change happened with GIFs and emails.
Marketers thought to use GIFs on email signatures. Why? Because they noticed that email signatures don’t get the attention it deserves.
That section in the email helps in increasing lead generation, brand awareness, and legitimacy which overall helps with a business’ marketing metrics.
Email signatures contain the important details of the sender. It usually has:
- The full name of the sender
- Title and department
- Name of company
- Logo of the company
- Email address and telephone number
- Physical address
- Linked social media through icons
Being an important section in emails, marketers needed a way to get the recipients’ attention to look at this part. And a way that marketers thought would be to use GIFs or animated images.
But these aren’t your funny and random GIFs, these are specifically company-made GIFs to cater to their goal.
If recipients see this section of the email, there would be no doubt that their curiosity would also be piqued – making them read the whole section.
Why You Should Do Animated Email Signatures
There are lots of ways to connect and get the attention of your email recipients. One way could be improving your conversational English, so your email content doesn’t come off like a salesperson.
Another way could be using a well-thought-out email subject line. Wherein you’ll hook them even before they open the email.
And lastly, a way to stand out and be remembered would be through animated email signatures.
There are billions of emails being sent and received every day. In 2019 alone, there were 293.6 billion emails sent back and forth each day. And that number has undoubtedly increased throughout the years as new email accounts are being created daily.
As you know, emails are not just used for personal things. Businesses also use this as a marketing channel to reach their customers.
In fact, 9 out of every 10 marketers use email marketing to distribute any form of content. It’s that one channel that helps marketers reach their marketing goals.
With this, you can only imagine the number of emails that consumers receive daily.
So how do you make your email stand out from the rest? How can your email stick to the recipient’s mind? You can do so by using animated email signatures.
To convince you more on why you should do it. Here are a few benefits of using it:
1. It’s a sure way to grab attention
Marketers love attention. That’s why they do market research to know where their audience is. If their demographics are students, they study student behavior. If their customers are people that are 30+ years in age, they need to know where these people hang out digitally.
They are always in constant search of grabbing attention. Before, they would grab attention by transforming long-form content into infographics. Now some use animated images.
A small moving image is enough to bring attention to the email signature. Even if you’re not a business, you can still utilize this to let people remember you and your email.
Just take a look at what Karen Davis did with her email signature:
Not only did the animation of her face make you look at the email signature longer but it also made you read the contents of it. There’s also a good chance that you also saw the promotional sale below.
2. It’s a subtle way to share brands’ USP
Sometimes recipients of your emails are so desensitized with marketing techniques. Nothing really gets their full attention anymore.
But when you incorporate animated images on your email signature, that’s one way to catch them off-guard and hook their attention.
And in that split-second attention shift, you can hook them by displaying your product’s USP or a fact about your business that you want them to know.
3. It makes people remember your company logo and name
When something is out of the normal, our brains are wired to remember more of that at the end of the day. Why? Because it was something unique and out of the ordinary.
Now put the same logic into your emails. When you send out emails, you most definitely want people to remember your logo and name – especially when you’re trying to promote something.
You can achieve this by making great email content or using an animated icon that plays with your brand or name.
Tips For Animated Email Signatures
Building and creating your email signature should be a fun process. Creating an animated one should be even more fun.
There’s no hard rule when creating these types of signatures. You just need to think outside the box to create stunning animated icons.
I. Play around with your logo
Anything that moves in a supposed static setting will surely grab a person’s attention. And if you do this by making your logo animated, it will have a higher chance of being remembered.
Plus, when the focus is in that email signature section, recipients will end up reading the whole thing. They’ll know more about your company’s detail.
II. Make it clean
When creating animated email signatures, going with simple animation is the best path to take if you wish to stand out. The last thing you want to do is to annoy your recipients with “noisy” and over-the-top animations.
Yes, we’d like to get their attention but we need to do it the right way.
Like this example:
Notice how they played with their logo. Its animation followed a drop like a crude would do. Their animation is clean, fast; it works with a set of colors, and is witty.
III. Mind the size of your animated icon
You don’t want your animated email signature taking up 40-50% of the email’s space. You want it to be small enough but at the same time making the animation and the message still clear.
Sometimes, businesses go overboard with their animation which in return demands a bigger GIF size. This then takes up more space than it should.
Remember to keep it simple to let your animated icon have the right size.
Risks That Come With Animated Email Signatures
If there are positive impacts on using animated email signatures, there are also some risks that come with it.
You need to look at both sides to decide if you should use this or not. Here are the different risks that you may encounter when using this.
A. Recipients might see it as unprofessional
There’s this idea that when it comes to emails, everything should be professional. From the greeting to the closing line.
If you add a GIF to your email signature, this might come off as unprofessional for some.
To counter this risk, you should know more about the group of people that you’re sending your email to. You can classify them by categories or industries. You can also sort them by their position in their jobs.
So it’s important not to just fire away with GIFs after this post. Assessment of your audience is a good idea to do first.
B. It might be used too often
When you’ve been sending GIFs in emails for a few years now, this tactic might not work as well as before. Again, when people see things more often, that thing becomes normal to them.
What you can do to counter this risk is to use it only when it’s appropriate. For example, if you have products on sale, you can place a small GIF next to your email signature.
C. Recipients might be distracted
Since GIFs are in constant movement and can’t be paused, this can distract your recipient’s focus on the content of your email.
To address this risk, make sure that your GIF isn’t too big and over the top. If your animated image or icon isn’t the highlight of your email, then create it as such. Just make a GIF that supplements your email signature.
D. Some email clients don’t support animations
The last thing you want after creating the animated icon for your email signature is your recipient not seeing it.
There are some email softwares or platforms that don’t support animations or GIFs.
In some instances, it’s the users’ preference that they don’t want to receive just any email. They’re concerned with cybersecurity and don’t want to run the risk of receiving scam emails. Along this line, some recipients use software that blocks animations.
When To Use Animated Email Signatures
Reading both the positives and negatives of automated email signatures, it’s safe to say that you don’t need to use them in business emails. When it comes to these types of emails, you’re in contact with people in your company. So there’s no reason as to why you need their attention on your email signature.
But if you’re doing email marketing, then that’s a good situation to use these animated images. You need to keep your recipients reading your email from top to bottom. Keep them engaged the whole time they have your email open.
Just remember the risks that come with this. But if you’re confident with your animations, then go for it.
Conclusion
It’s a given fact that animated email signatures are a great way to get attention. It’s much more pleasing to see than the traditional static email signature.
Although it comes with a few risks, if these animated icons are done correctly, those risks won’t be too big. People love animation and prefer to see things move quickly. That’s why GIFs were and probably still are used by a lot of people.
If you decide to go ahead with an animated Email Signature, this is easy to do using Crossware Mail Signature. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us for support.
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