Social Media Icons for Email Signatures

Adding social media icons to your email signature can be a great way to provide the recipient valuable additional ways to get to know you or your company. Your website is often the professional and “buttoned up” version of your brand, but your social media channels often can show more than your mission statement. When active and well maintained a social media presence can show your viewers who you are on a deeper level. What do you talk about most often? How do you engage with people online? What kinds of articles and content interest you the most?

Your customers want to know you better, they want to engage with you on a personal and human level. Social media also offers a chance for people to communicate with you without going through your contact form. Again, customers appreciate that kind of transparency and human-ness from the companies that they choose to work with.

Download free social media icons for email signatures

You can download these social media icons to add them to your email signature by right clicking and choosing Save image in your browser. They are free for anyone or any company who needs to use them. Their brand logos belong to the companies not to us.

Small Social Media Icons (22x22)
Medium Social Media Icons (32x32)
Large Social Media Icons (42x42)

Three ways to add social media icons to your email signature:

1. Use an email signature generator: When you use a tool (like Signature.email) you are able to go to a website where you enter the personal details for your signature, along with your company logo or other elements you might want to add. Then you can often add links to your social media profiles which show up as social media icons. Once you are finished you will be able to copy and paste the signature into your email client.
2. Use the basic editor in your email client: Email programs like Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, and others will often allow you to do simple rich text editing in the signature area of the application. Many of them will allow you to select an image which is downloaded to your computer and add it to the signature. This can work well, but may embed the image in the email causing your email recipients to have attachments in every email you send.
3. Use HTML code: If you are a smarty pants and want to use html code that is always a possibility. Remember to include the width and the height attribute on every image because email clients are particular about images and will often stretch and ruin them. Read more in our html email guide.

How do I use these social media icons in my email signature?

If you are planning to use your default email signature editor that comes with your email client then I've included some generic instructions below. You may want to reference our guide for adding images into email signatures on Gmail, Outlook, and Mac Mail. Be warned that the editors that come with your email client can be pretty basic and aren't really intended for more complex email signatures. If you are looking for something with more design you may want to consider an email signature generator.

Otherwise here are the basic steps that you can use:

1. Save the social media icon(s) you want from the list above to your computer by right clicking on them and choosing "Save to Computer"
2. Open the signature management area of your email client, it's usually in the settings or preferences area.
3. If you haven't already, create a new email signature and give it a name.
4. Try dragging the icon directly into the editor window. If that doesn't work then place your cursor where you want the image added and use the "Image" tool to select it from your computer.
5. Some email clients allow you to resize the image. If you can, try dragging the edge of the logo and pulling it to be smaller. Most of these social icons are intended to be used at half the size for retina displays.
6. Click on the social media icon and find the button where you can add a URL link. This is where you will add the hyperlink to your profile or channel on the social media network

What should social media icons in email signatures link to?

Typically social media icons are added to an email signature as an image that links to their own or their companies profile page on that social media channel. For example when someone clicks on the “f" icon for Facebook in your signature, they should land on your Facebook profile that contains your details, posts, pictures, and shared articles. These presenses on the web are one of your marketing channels that you can use to your advantage, and your employee's email signatures are a great way to get your clients looking at them.

If this is all pretty new, then it might be helpful to read our guide on how to create an email signature. In that article we talk about what to include, what not to include, and an in dept look on how to create an email signature.

Which social media accounts should I use?

The largest question to answer when determining which social media channels to promote in your email signature is to ask which ones you or your company are most active on. If you never plan to post to a particular social channel again then there is no reason to include it in your email signature. Consider quality over quantity here. You don’t get an award for how many social media channels or pages you are on, only how active you are on them.

Many companies like to have a basic social presence on the most popular social channels:

1. Facebook - Even though this is primarily considered a highly “personal” social channel, it is becoming more popular for businesses to have a presence and post on it. There are many people on Facebook that engage with brand related content every day.
2. Twitter - Short and sweet, this social network is great for getting to know the personality of your brand.
3. LinkedIn - Known for being the professional business network, this is an important one to represent your company. It can often be the place where people look first for basic information about your company and browse through some of your employees if they are interested.
4. Instagram - Instagram is great if you have visual things to show. Brands who do well are giving their customers what they are looking for. Have your customers send in their photos of them using your product and ask their permission to post it here!
5. YouTube - Many companies don’t use YouTube as much as a social media channel, but rather a repository of videos about their company, their products, and their content. It may include “how to’s” and other helpful content for your customers to use in a self-serve manner.
6. Pinterest - If your audience includes more women than men, Pinterest can be a great place to start. This platform excels if you have something “collectible” for people. Recipes, fashions, inspiration, step by step tutorials, anything of that nature.

There are many more of them and often they change based on the industries and interests of your customers. Feel free to include others that you are active on! That said, we try to recommend linking to 2-5 of your social media profiles. Any more is overwhelming and any less just looks funny with a single icon being used.

Should the social media icons link to the business accounts, or employees accounts?

The most common that we have seen is that the social media icons in an email signature link to the business account. This is because these accounts are branded for the company and are usually managed by a trusted person who understands that what they post is representing the company. This allows your clients & customers to follow the account and get updates on what is happening at the company.

Linking to employee's accounts may be more tricky because they are unfiltered and anything can be posted to these accounts. The employee may not always be thinking about representing their company with what they say online. That said, linking to professional accounts like a LinkedIn profile, a portfolio, or a professional blog can be valuable uses of employee's social media when used well.

How Can I Create Custom Colored Social Media Icons?

Designers will often take the social media icons and change their colors to match the color of the brand they are designing for. So instead of just using blue for Facebook, red for YouTube, and cyan for Twitter, they will make them all match to the “brand orange” that matches your companies’ colors. This is a nice effect and can be used to keep social icons from distracting from your logo or other brand elements because of their colors.

Designers will often do this in a program like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, or Sketch. If you don’t have one of those programs there are some free alternatives available like Gimp and Inkscape. Otherwise the Signature.email editor has the ability for paid accounts to choose both a background color as well as an icon color and match them to your brand colors with a few clicks. Its one of the things that sets our service apart from all of the others!

What Shapes Should My Social Media Icons Be?

The most common shape you will see out there is probably the traditional circle for social media icons. That said, squares and rounded corner squares are common as well. There really isn’t any reason to any shape other than your preference and matching your brand styles. You will find that most people just go with their gut and choose the style they like the most. Signature.email’s paid account also allows for some unconventional styles like Hexagons and circles with outlines.

Social media icons are a popular element to add to your email signatures. They help to engage your customers and show them another side of your company that they won’t be able to find on your website. They can be highly effective at driving engagement and also for other purposes like personalized one-on-one communication, recruiting, and tutorials/helpful content.

Add some social media icons to your email signature today!