Creating an embedded gif video for email signature
March 8, 2024 11:16 AM Subscribe
Someone I knew a while ago had a really neat small gif (I think it was a gif) in her email signature that was a brief video of her. I am no longer in contact with her, so I can't ask how she did it. But for reasons, I'd like to create one. How do I do this?
You just insert the image into your email signature, exact instructions will vary but you can just google
"insert image into email signature {mailclient}" where [mailclient] is whatever you use (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, etc.). The instructions would be the same for both animated or still images so convert the video as advised above and then just stick it right into your signature.
Also FYI, do not assume that it will actually work for the recipient, so don't put your name/email/phone or anything you want people to be able to see into the video. Many clients/servers will block images in email signatures (esp if they are hosted externally per xedrik's suggestion) as that is a common way to do email analytics (e.g. spyware), and many versions of Outlook just won't play them at all, so those folks may see nothing or just see it frozen on the the first frame of the video. Functionally if you put anything other then text in your signature you will be breaking it for some % of the people you're emailing. I for one do not think 90% of people seeing a cool video is worth 10% of people seeing a broken icon or getting the GIF as an attachment instead of an inline item, due to the confusion/annoyance that would cause.
Also many email clients will allow you to set one signature for new messages and another (usually shorter) signature for replies. Consider how your email chain will look if you have a long back and forth with someone, having the same video GIF looping over and over 10 times in the chain is probably something want to avoid.
[I used to think it was fun/cool to have a "standard" encryption certificate in my email signature. Other folks had very strong feelings otherwise. To be fair it's not a format as common as GIF, but the point I'm making is what you send may not be what other folks see, no matter the format.]
posted by tiamat at 11:52 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]
"insert image into email signature {mailclient}" where [mailclient] is whatever you use (e.g. Gmail, Outlook, etc.). The instructions would be the same for both animated or still images so convert the video as advised above and then just stick it right into your signature.
Also FYI, do not assume that it will actually work for the recipient, so don't put your name/email/phone or anything you want people to be able to see into the video. Many clients/servers will block images in email signatures (esp if they are hosted externally per xedrik's suggestion) as that is a common way to do email analytics (e.g. spyware), and many versions of Outlook just won't play them at all, so those folks may see nothing or just see it frozen on the the first frame of the video. Functionally if you put anything other then text in your signature you will be breaking it for some % of the people you're emailing. I for one do not think 90% of people seeing a cool video is worth 10% of people seeing a broken icon or getting the GIF as an attachment instead of an inline item, due to the confusion/annoyance that would cause.
Also many email clients will allow you to set one signature for new messages and another (usually shorter) signature for replies. Consider how your email chain will look if you have a long back and forth with someone, having the same video GIF looping over and over 10 times in the chain is probably something want to avoid.
[I used to think it was fun/cool to have a "standard" encryption certificate in my email signature. Other folks had very strong feelings otherwise. To be fair it's not a format as common as GIF, but the point I'm making is what you send may not be what other folks see, no matter the format.]
posted by tiamat at 11:52 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]
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Once you have your gif, if your mail program doesn't directly allow embedding images in your signature, host it somewhere online, and put a HTML image tag in, <img src="http://source.of.image/yourgif.gif"> and make sure that you have rich/HTML formatted email sending enabled.
If you're hosting the image on a site/domain other than where your email is being sent from, it may get filtered/blocked by some users' spam filters, or they'll get a "external content has not been loaded for this message" sort of warning.
posted by xedrik at 11:39 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]