Problems with HTML email signatures not appearing in replies

[Russell]

Hello everyone:

I’m trying to diagnose an issue with an HTML signature I designed for client. They placed this in the signature area of their Gmail and it seems to work fine when they send a message. However, the signature gets lost when they get a reply: the image disappears and alignment goes out of whack.

I think this too hard to diagnose since email programs will sometimes convert messages into plain text or whatever. But it’s important to my client so I thought I’d investigate.

Here’s the signature:
http://brightldn.com/signatures/dave-signature-1.html

If anyone can offer any suggestions about how to improve the performance, do let me know.

[Anonymous]

I doubt it’s being picked up and resent by the respondent. Have them (your client) send a test to you, or to their-self, if they have a separate email address, then reply to see if it is resent. If it isn’t I don’t see a solution as it is out of your client’s control what another person’s email does, or doesn’t do.

What is important is that your client’s customers/contacts are receiving it.

[__]

I don’t see a solution as it is out of your client’s control what another person’s email does, or doesn’t do.

Absolutely.

And it’s not something that should be in your control. Keep in mind that many email clients (either by default, or through user preference) disallow inline HTML images, and rightfully so: it’s a privacy and security issue. <img> tags in emails are used for tracking/marketing, finding vulnerable targets, and as an attack vector.

The best approach is to duplicate the info in the image in a plain text version of the signature and send both. (You should be taking this same approach with the email itself, as well: if you’re sending an HTML version, always include an alternative part in plain text.)

[__]

I could have sworn gmail used to have the option, but all I can find now is a “Plain Text Only” mode. You can programatically send multipart html+plain text emails, and all email clients should display them fine (according to user preferences).

In practice, nowadays most people accept html (sans images), or at least rich text, in their emails. Just make sure that if your image contains any critical information, it is duplicated elsewhere. You can usually do this without looking too odd.

Another common approach for marketing emails is to have a link at the top of the message to an online version of the message, where you can be sure everything is displayed correctly. That’s probably not what you need here, but good to keep in mind for other projects.

[Anonymous]

In gmail it’s under “settings” and near the bottom. You can enter plain text and an image there.

[Author]

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