The Good Tech Companies - Your Company Logo in Emails: How to Add an Email Avatar in Popular Mailbox Providers

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/your-company-logo-in-emails-how-to-add-an-email-avatar-in-popular-mailbox-providers. Learn how to add your logo or a photo to emails in Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and AppleMail. Discover the difference between email avatars, BIMI, and Gravatar. Check more stories related to programming at: https://hackernoon.com/c/programming. You can also check exclusive content about #email-marketing, #branding, #bimi, #email-marketing-tips, #good-company, #email-avatars, #are-email-avatars-important, #how-to-add-email-avatars, and more. This story was written by: @selzy. Learn more about this writer by checking @selzy's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. An email avatar is a small circle with an image that appears next to the sender’s name and address. It can also be called an email profile picture or a email profile logo. Company logos as avatars are a solid option to promote brand recall and stand out among competitors in an inbox.

This audio is presented by Hacker Noon, where anyone can learn anything about any technology. Your company logo in emails. How to add an email avatar in popular mailbox providers by Selzy. If you ever wondered how to add your company's logo to your emails, this article is for you. Today, Selzy covers everything about email avatars and their impact on business. What is an email avatar and why do you need it? You might not know what email avatar is, but you've definitely seen one in your inbox. An email avatar is a small circle with an image that appears next to the sender's name and address, helping recipients identify senders. It can also be called an email profile picture or an email profile logo.

By default, mailbox providers assign generic nondescript avatars to new users. Usually, it's the first letter of the sender's name. Unlike on social media and emails, profile pictures don't seem to be a must. Even service emails from Google or Yahoo don't have an avatar. That's why emails that they've an avatar tend to stand out more. Look at the screenshot below. Which messages did you look at first? The chances are that emails from Morning Brew and Mike Allen immediately grabbed your attention. And only then, you scanned the other two, with LNA letters instead of pictures. Email avatars aren't just visually striking, they also bring tangible value.

According to the 2023 Consumer Email Tracker Report by DMA, 61% of people decide to open the email because they recognize the brand, and 39% do so because they recognize the brand logo. For senders, it means that an email avatar, especially a branded one, will likely increase open rates. Different avatar types. Automatically generated avatar that's the default option. Usually, a mailbox provider assigns a logo with the first letter of your or your brand's name. Instead of a letter, it can be a human silhouette, but still just asnondescript. Company logo Company logos as avatars are a solid option to promote brand recall and stand out among competitors in an inbox. This helps recipients

quickly identify marketing messages from their favorite brands in a cluttered inbox. Custom images Custom images, usually photos, help subscribers recognize you faster. An example. Journalist Mike Allen uses a photo in his Axios newsletter. Interestingly, emails from Axios as a company don't have a logo. How to add email avatars for different mailbox providers? Adding an email avatar is a simple process, similar for different mailbox providers. Go to account settings, click the email avatar, and upload or choose the picture to replace the auto-generated one. The tricky part is that avatars don't get displayed across different mailbox providers.

If you send from Outlook to Gmail, Gmail recipients won't see an avatar you set in Outlook. If you want to send bulk emails with an ESP and have your profile picture displayed in any inbox, create a corporate email domain and link it to each mailbox provider. Then, set a profile picture for this domain in each mailbox provider separately. Let's explore how to add profile logos across different mailbox providers and what nuance you might need to take into account. Gmail Go to Google Workspace account settings, choose an image from your computer, and crop it.

Gmail doesn't have any requirements for image size or format. Google Workspace allows users with different addresses belonging to the same email domain to have unique profile pictures. It's useful when you send multiple newsletters and want each newsletter to have its unique email avatar. On mobile devices, you can see email avatars in the Gmail app right in the inbox. They also appear in push notifications. On the desktop, they appear only inside opened emails. Outlook ON the Outlook homepage, click on the avatar at the top of the page, choose edit profile, and add or change the profile picture in the settings. It will only show up in the mobile apps and inside opened emails on

the desktop. Although Outlook is a big email provider, not many seem to use it to the fullest. The same brands and newsletters we covered earlier in the article don't have a profile picture in Outlook. Then again, even Outlook's support team doesn't have one. Go to Yahoo's main page and, depending on the platform, desktop, web app, or mobile, change the profile picture to your liking. Default Yahoo avatars are restylized letters of the sender's name, but you can always replace them with a profile picture. Once you set a profile picture, you can't remove it and revert to stylized letters. You can only replace it with a new one. Your email avatar will be displayed in all Yahoo services, for example, in Yahoo News comment section. Some users can choose to not

see sender's profile pictures in their inboxes in DAVE the profile pictures replaced with checkboxes for a more minimalistic look. Apple Mail Having your brand's logo displayed in Apple Mail is not possible unless subscribers decide to assign it by themselves. They have to create a new contact from the email address, and then choose to add a photo to get to set up an avatar, which can be any picture. The senders won't see them. Avatar versus BME. One more way to add an email avatar is BME or brand indicators for message identification. The result will be the same, your email profile picture will be in place. However, with BME, you get logos and better

protection for your recipients from phishing attacks. BME is a method of email authentication, in addition to DKIM, DMARC, and SPF. In addition, is the keyword, to get BME, you need to set up the DMARC authentication first. From that perspective, getting BME sounds like a good thing to do, but there's a, but, it costs at least $1299 per year. That's because you have to buy a digital certificate that proves you own your logo as a trademark. That's a bummer for businesses that don't have $1,200 to spend on a 32KB image. Moreover, Beame is not universally supported yet. As of May 2024, Microsoft doesn't even plan to implement it, and some email clients like Yahoo! Japan, Seznam, CZ, Comcast, and Qualitia are only considering it.

So, if the majority of your audience is not in the US, getting Beame might simply be not worth it. Email avatar vs. Gravatar. Gravatar occasionally pops up in conversations about email avatars. However, you can't set an avatar for a mailbox provider with Gravatar because it is meant for a different use. Gravatar is a service that helps you automatically set profile pictures, contact details, and even a short bio for websites on WordPress and a handful of services that are heavily used in the work setting. Gravatar is especially useful with WordPress websites since it saves you from the trouble

of uploading a profile picture each time you want to leave a comment in a new WordPress website. Here's what the setup process looks like. 1. Sign up on Gravatar with your email address. Backslash dot. 2. Upload an image or a photo you like. Backslash dot. 3. Going forward, you'll have your profile picture displayed on every WordPress website or supported service, provided you sign up with the same email address as on Gravatar. Key takeaways. Equals equals avatars help emails stand out and impact the open rate. Equals equals unique logos look more pronounced than generic ones,

recipients also trust them more. Equals equals you can add company logos or your photos for email avatars. Your company will stand out in subscribers' inboxes while a photo helps subscribers immediately recognize who sent the email. Email avatars are only seen within the same mailbox provider. Create a corporate account in each mailbox provider and set an avatar. Otherwise, if you only have Gmail with a logo, your Out mailbox provider and set an avatar. Otherwise, if you only have Gmail with a logo, your Outlook subscribers won't see it. Use BME to add logos and improve security but be ready to pay. BME gives you a trademark logo and protection

from phishing attacks. It costs at least $1,299 a year while avatars without BME are free. Thank you for listening to this HackerNoon story, read by Artificial Intelligence. Visit hackernoon.com to read, write, learn and publish.