Quick Guide on How to Create or Change a Signature in Gmail

Email signatures have become an integral part of professional communication. They allow you to showcase your brand while providing valuable contact information to recipients. For Gmail users, creating a customized signature is easy and offers immense benefits. This comprehensive guide will teach you how to create a signature in Gmail as well as edit or change your Gmail signature.

Why you need an email signature

An email signature serves multiple purposes:

1. Branding Tool: A professional signature reinforces your brand by prominently displaying your logo, tagline and other brand elements. This helps recipients instantly recognize your emails.
2. Contact Information: Signatures conveniently provide your contact details like phone numbers, addresses and social media handles. This facilitates further communication.
3. Credibility: A clean, well-formatted signature portrays you as an organized professional. This builds trust and credibility.
4. Promotions: You can highlight offers, events or product launches through banners or text in your Gmail signature.
5. Compliance: Certain industries require legal disclaimers on official communication. Email signatures allow appending these effortlessly.

How to create a Gmail signature

Gmail offers a simple editor to add signature in Gmail. Follow these steps:

1. Open Gmail on your desktop and click on the settings icon in the top-right corner.
2. In the settings sidebar, click on “See All Settings”.
3. Scroll down and look for the Signatures section.
4. Click on “Create New” to open the signature editor.
5. Give a name to your signature and save it by clicking on “Create”.

You will now see a text box where you can create your signature.

Elements to include in your signature

An impactful Gmail signature must include:

• Name and job title
• Company name
• Contact details like phone, email, addresses
• Website and social media links
• Logo or brand image
• Sign-off message

Optional elements like quotes or banners can be appended for further personalization.

Formatting tips

Follow these tips to make your signature visually appealing:

• Use consistent formatting for all text elements. Maintain uniform fonts, sizes and colors.
• Separate sections like name, job title and contact details with divider lines. Use consecutive underscore characters.
• Make important text bold or underlined for higher prominence.
• Ensure maximum contrast between text and background colors.
• Keep images crisp and logos vectorized for better quality. Appropriately size them as per available space.
• Align all elements to the left for a clean look.
• Restrict the entire signature width within 50-60% of message window to prevent messy appearance.

How to add an image to your Gmail signature

Adding visuals gives your text-heavy signature a stylish look. To add images like logos:

1. Place the cursor at the point where you want the image inserted.
2. Click on the image icon in the toolbar and upload the desired picture.
3. Select the inserted picture and modify size as needed.

Ensure uploaded images aren’t too large or heavy. Recommended dimensions are 400 x 100 pixels for banners and 125 x 125 pixels for icons. Save images in web-friendly JPG or PNG formats.

Adding hyperlinks

Hyperlinks make your signature interactive, letting users directly visit linked websites or make calls using clickable phone numbers.

To add hyperlink:

1. Select text you want to be clickable
2. Click on the link icon in the toolbar
3. Enter the complete URL of target webpage and click “OK”

For linking phone numbers:

1. Select the phone number that needs hyperlinking
2. Click on the link icon in the toolbar
3. Enter “Tel:” followed by your complete phone number e.g. Tel: +91-9999999999
4. Click “OK”

The number will now directly dial on smartphones and tablets.

Advanced formatting with HTML

Gmail’s default signature editor allows only basic text formatting. For richer customization with elements like styled text, tables or graphs, you need to edit the underlying HTML code.

Follow these steps:

1. Draft your signature in a text editor like Notepad++. Use HTML tags for enabling complex formatting.
2. Save the file with an .htm or .html extension.
3. Open the file in your browser to preview how it will appear.
4. Copy the entire signature text.
5. Go to Gmail Settings and paste copied code into the signature text field.
6. Save changes.

HTML-formatted Gmail signatures appear correctly regardless of the receiving platform. The only limitation is that external CSS formatting won’t work.

Set default signatures

Gmail allows setting unique signatures for new emails and reply/forward messages.

To configure:

1. In signature settings, locate the section called “Signature Defaults”
2. Open drop downs to choose signatures you want to set as default for new mails and replies/forwards respectively.

This way your professional signature with contact details appears when emailing new contacts while communicating internally, a shorter sign-off message suffices.

How to change or edit existing signatures

To modify a signature:

1. Go to the signature setting section.
2. Click on the signature you want to edit from the left sidebar.
3. Make desired text additions, formatting changes, insert/resize images etc.
4. Finally click “Save Changes” to apply modifications.

You can now compose emails to observe updated signatures. Make iterative changes till satisfied with the final outcome.

Handy Gmail signature tips

Implement these tips to further refine your signature game:

Keep it short 

Lengthy signatures appearing on every email can annoy recipients. Keep signatures crisp with only essential contact details.

Promotional balance

Modest promotions through banners are fine but don’t make signatures overtly salesy. Keep primary focus on contact information.

Social media check 

Keep shared social media accounts active. Empty or unused accounts project unprofessionalism.

Mobile friendly

Optimize signature text size so that it doesn’t appear too tiny on compact mobile screens.

Own elsewhere too

Use the same signature consistently across all mailing platforms like Outlook and Yahoo Mail for maximum impact.

Updated information

Promptly update contact details if they change. Mails sent to obsolete addresses or disconnected phone numbers degrade credibility.

So that concludes our definitive guide on creating effective Gmail signatures! Follow the templates, tips and best practices outlined above to design email signatures that leave a lasting positive professional impression. Maintain them diligently as they form crucial customer touchpoints carrying your brand stamp. Sign-off confidently henceforth knowing your signature has got your back!

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