I'd like for all emails send from my server (e.g. mail#example.com) to arrive in recipients inboxes with a custom sender image used in Apple Mail and Google Inbox.
I have created a new Google+ account, linked and verified my website (by uploading the .html file, you know ;]), but still, the emails don't contain my Google + profile image as their sender image.
I assume it's something to do with me not sending emails from the new gmail address I've created with Google+. I'm hoping someone knows how to work around this and have Google+ treat any emails coming from my domain as the new Google+ account's own.
This Article seems to provide a good overall answer. I'll do a quick summary here.
As a takeaway:
Ensure your site is verified on Google+. This is done in Webmaster tools(link), and your webmaster must approve.
Ensure you have adequate email traffic (seems around 1k a week should do it).
When sending from a domain not matching Google+, you'll need to include a snippet of code in your email, and have Gmail approve the link.
Ensure that your email is authenticated against your domain and not your ESPs (or use the Featured Image markup).
Related
Websites will often send notification emails from addresses like hello#example.com or no-reply#example.com. When these show up in Gmail / Inbox, they often have a name and an avatar associated, like this one from Zeplin:
I know if you're using Google Apps, as an administrator you could create a user called no-reply and set their avatar. But this also uses up one user slot which costs $5 / month. And I'm not sure if this technique works outside of Gmail or Inbox.
Are there other ways to set the avatar for automated email addresses?
Have a look at Gravatar.
What Is Gravatar?
An "avatar" is an image that represents you online—a little picture
that appears next to your name when you interact with websites.
A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create
your profile just once, and then when you participate in any
Gravatar-enabled site, your Gravatar image will automatically follow
you there.
More info here:
https://en.gravatar.com/
This is the result for the email above.
A catch all email address allows you can receive the Gravatar activation emails for non existent email addresses.
Details for Google Apps:
Google Admin console
From the dashboard, click Apps, then click G Suite
Gmail
User settings.
Catch-all address section
TL;DR Get a verified Google+ Brand Page and enable DKIM authentication for any external service you send email through (ala Mailchimp).
These steps are not documented and Google themselves did not help. But, after implementing them, my business avatar started to appear for emails sent via Mailchimp or Mandrill or some such with a return email address of my domain.
1) Create a Google+ Brand Account page (https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1710600). You may already have one set up as part of general SEO, but you need one for the avatar to work. Make sure too, at the end of the process (which is again, is poorly documented) that on your Google+ brand page, you see the little verified badge next to your business name.
2) Set the avatar you want on your brand page.
3) From whatever external service you send email from, set up DKIM authentication for your domain. Google Inbox won't display an avatar if it detects the email as being sent 'on behalf' of your domain; the DKIM authentication will make Inbox believe your domain actually sent it, and then apply the avatar. (These instructions vary wildly depending on your email provider, but here are the ones for Mailchimp).
Go to https://myaccount.google.com/email
Click on "Advanced Settings" then on "Alternate Email".
Verify emails.
UPDATE: closing and moving to https://superuser.com/q/1491110/129302
I am asking this on Stackoverflow because I honestly have no idea about the actual implementation , so depending on answer, I will move it later.
The question is: why email client, for example, Windows Mail, displays icons (sender pictures) from several companies.
As you can see, Microsoft, Tubmlr, Paypal provides pictures.
As well as Godaddy, Amazon, Github, Quora, Medium, Meetup and others.
But the majority of business senders has no sender pictures.
How sender pictures are implemented?
What I've tried already:
Let's pretend, I own hello#example.com
Added hello#example.com to Gravatar and uploaded custom icon.
Created Google Account for hello#example.com and changed account picture.
Added favicon.ico to example.com
Added webmanifest with multiple icon sizes to example.com
Tried multiple link tags in / of example.com
Configured DNS server to include all required records (SPF/TXT/DMARC/DKIM) for BIMI.
No luck yet. Are they hardcoded in email client?
That would be strange, because why Quora is hardcoded in, while Yahoo is not, so I may reject this theory.
I have also noticed, that sender picture depends on the full email address: there is a picture in email from no-reply-aws#amazon.com, but there is no in email from aws-marketing-email-replies#amazon.com
How it is done?
Websites will often send notification emails from addresses like hello#example.com or no-reply#example.com. When these show up in Gmail / Inbox, they often have a name and an avatar associated, like this one from Zeplin:
I know if you're using Google Apps, as an administrator you could create a user called no-reply and set their avatar. But this also uses up one user slot which costs $5 / month. And I'm not sure if this technique works outside of Gmail or Inbox.
Are there other ways to set the avatar for automated email addresses?
Have a look at Gravatar.
What Is Gravatar?
An "avatar" is an image that represents you online—a little picture
that appears next to your name when you interact with websites.
A Gravatar is a Globally Recognized Avatar. You upload it and create
your profile just once, and then when you participate in any
Gravatar-enabled site, your Gravatar image will automatically follow
you there.
More info here:
https://en.gravatar.com/
This is the result for the email above.
A catch all email address allows you can receive the Gravatar activation emails for non existent email addresses.
Details for Google Apps:
Google Admin console
From the dashboard, click Apps, then click G Suite
Gmail
User settings.
Catch-all address section
TL;DR Get a verified Google+ Brand Page and enable DKIM authentication for any external service you send email through (ala Mailchimp).
These steps are not documented and Google themselves did not help. But, after implementing them, my business avatar started to appear for emails sent via Mailchimp or Mandrill or some such with a return email address of my domain.
1) Create a Google+ Brand Account page (https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1710600). You may already have one set up as part of general SEO, but you need one for the avatar to work. Make sure too, at the end of the process (which is again, is poorly documented) that on your Google+ brand page, you see the little verified badge next to your business name.
2) Set the avatar you want on your brand page.
3) From whatever external service you send email from, set up DKIM authentication for your domain. Google Inbox won't display an avatar if it detects the email as being sent 'on behalf' of your domain; the DKIM authentication will make Inbox believe your domain actually sent it, and then apply the avatar. (These instructions vary wildly depending on your email provider, but here are the ones for Mailchimp).
Go to https://myaccount.google.com/email
Click on "Advanced Settings" then on "Alternate Email".
Verify emails.
I'm building a website that allows user to connect using Facebook Connect. So far I'm able to log the user in and fetch data about them (name, email, pic, etc.). If I fetch the email (using Users.getInfo) I get a proxied email (apps+blahblah#facebook.com), which is absolutely great. Problem is, that email doesn't work. I've tried sending an email to it and I never received it. There are two reasons I see that could cause this:
I don't have enough permissions. Ok, I can understand that, but if I don't have enough permissions then why are they returning an email at all?
The email has to be somehow sent from the application itself (I've tried sending it from my Gmail account) -- but how would Facebook know that the email is coming from the application?
So which is it? Or is it something else?
I have recently been looking into this as well.
I did find some guidelines on http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/01/15/facebook-platform-email-sharing-api-proxy-email-service-going-live-in-5-days/
here is the most important part:
Emails you send must clearly indicate that they are from you and must not appear to be from Facebook or anyone else. For example, you must not include Facebook logos or brand assets in your emails, and you must not mention Facebook in the subject line, “from” line, or body header. All emails to users must originate from the same domain, and you must provide us with the name of that domain in the Facebook Developer application used to manage your application.
I have already found that if you do not have the address in the from as #facebookappmail.com
might even have to be appname#facebookappmail.com the emails will bounce. So sending from your gmail will not work, the "blah blah blah" in the proxy contains the application information of the application that had the permissions to get that email.
I am new to website designing and wanted to know couple of things.
when some clicks on the link on my website say www.google.com, can i trace that how many people clicked on it.
When i send out emails with attachments, can i record how many people opened those attachements. btw this is not yahoo or gmail, its my personal email with an ISP.
if so, please put references so i can read them or explanation if possible
Create the links on your website so that they do a GET to your website first, and then redirect to the desired website.
Click here
The email attachment is a different problem. If you send an email that reads the attachment from your website, you can record the traffic.
For tracking outbound clicks, services like Google Analytics can wrap every link on your site with JavaScript and provide statistics and sexy graphs.
For tracking email attachments, it depends on the attachment. Static files like images can't make callbacks to the Internet, but something like a PDF with embedded JavaScript might be able to.
As for links within the emails, you can make each link in each email unique by associating a token with each email recipient, e.g. Some Link. Store the token in a database along with the recipient's email address and later you can cross-reference hits on your site with emails you sent out.
I know there are a handful services that do the latter, but I can't name any offhand. Search for "email newsletter service."