HTML and images in your Email message
You can't add tables or images to your email.
this article explains how you can add images, tables etc. to your Email message.
This way, one can give more attention to there email, making it better to read
or to promote something.
To get this effect, you'll only need any kind of WYSIWYG HTML editor. Examples
of this can be Dreamwaever or Frontpage. Also online editors will work, like
DevEdit, Google Pages or any other you can find.
I recommend you to read A Guide to CSS Support in Email. As you can see, Gmail
doesn't support a lot of CSS. So, if you want to make sure that this will work,
exclude as much CSS as possible, making only use of HTML. Don't use "spacing",
"margin" etc.
First, make your email as you want it to look like. Now add your image to the
editor by pressing the Image button. A new window will appear with several
options. In the Source: field, enter the URL of your image. If you don't have a
webhost on your own, you can use ImageShack to upload your images for free.
Additionally, you can add a Title. Let the rest be as it is, only change the
Border Style to "No Border" if you're going to use the image as an URL. Now
press Insert to insert the image to your message.
Now you can make a link from your image. Select the image (or text if you want
to link it to another page) and press Hyperlink. This will also open up a new
window where you can set some values. Set the Source to the page you want to
link to. Set the Target to Blank. This will cause to open the URL in a new
windows. You can also change the Title of the link. Press Insert if you want to
embed the URL to your message.
When you're all done with your email, select it all (Ctrl+A). Now Copy you
message (Ctrl+C). Go to Gmail and compose a new message. Make sure you have Rich
Formatting set to On. Now Paste (Ctrl+V) your message in the message box of
Gmail. Now you should have your image in your Gmail with a URL to your website.
You can check if your URL is working by holding "Ctrl" and clicking on the link.
There you have it, your own image in a Gmail message. Experiment on your own on
what options are possible.
HTML in signature
Even if your message can contain HTML, the standard signature doesn't allow rich
formatting, therefore you can't "Copy-Paste" your HTML code there. Also, it's a
lot of work copy-pasting your HTML signature in every email that you send.
There is a little workaround for this one, you'll just need Firefox as your
browser and install the Better Gmail Add-on. This add-on has a lot of features,
making it a really cool plugin.
When installed, go to Extra... > Better Gmail in Firefox. Go to the tab Compose
and set Signature Settings: Float/HTML/No dashes on. Now press Ok to save the
changes.
Go to your favorite WYSIWYG editor and create your signature. I made one with a
link to the RSS Feed of my website. Depending on your editor, you'll need to get
the plain HTML code. On online-html-editor.org, you'll need to go to Save file
now and open the downloaded file with Notepad. Select all the code between
<body> and </body> and Copy (Ctrl+C) it. Make sure no style / span attributes
are in your code.
Now go to Settings on your Gmail page. Select the tab General and scroll down to
Signature. Set the radio button from "No signature" to the radio button before
the empty text field. If you have Better Gmail correctly installed, you should
have the three checkboxes. Make sure you have the checkbox before Allow HTML in
Signature set to On. Now paste (Ctrl+V) your code from the previous step in the
signature text box. Scroll down and press Save changes to save. When now
creating a new email, you should have a nice looking signature with HTML format.
Enjoy this knowledge. Cheer up your Gmail messages and promote your site or
anything else more effective this way. Take a look at a complete list of HTML
tags to make even cooler messages. Also take note of the possibility that the
receiver of the message doesn't find the images / colors nice or cool, but finds
it rather annoying. Don't overdue it.