Create a Digital Signature Image on Your Emails

The technological advancement of the world is reaching a point where an average person’s daily activities are carried out digitally. These activities require authenticity to prove the validity of their carriers and also serve as insurance for their recipients.

Digital Signatures are in basic terms electronic signatures which are highly encrypted to ensure the authenticity of digital messages and documents sent via emails. If you run a business or use emails for your day-to-day activities, these e-signatures highly secure sensitive documents and media sent over the internet without any interruption or fraudulent activities like PHISHING, which is a fraudulent technique used by fraudsters to send emails fronting as big companies in an attempt to gain personal and payment information of individuals.

Browser plugins let you sign documents right from your email account. You can type or draw your signature during this process. But using images in email signatures can feel more personal.

How to Create Signature Images for Email Documents

To create a digital signature image, take a picture of your signature with your smartphone or regular camera. Then upload the image to your computer. Alternately, create a scanned signature image. Either way, save your signature as an image file. You can create a digital signature image file on your computer, mobile device, or even a cloud service. Now open your email.

Open the document you want to create an electronic signature image for. Click the plugin signature button or drop-down menu. Choose the option such as «Add Signature» or «Sign». Click in the document where you need to create an electronic signature image. The plugin should give you «Draw» and «Type» options. You should see something such as «Create Signature from Image», too. Select the option to create an email signature with the image.

The plugin might present you with a shortlist of images to use. If not, navigate to wherever you’ve saved the signature image file. Choose your file. The plugin will insert it into your document. To finish, simply confirm the signature. The plugin you’ve used to create a digital signature should send a copy of the signed documents back to the sender. Otherwise, it will attach the document to a reply email for you.

Using Images in Email Signatures as a Default

Most plugins will let you set a default signature. Simply select one of your digital signature images as the default. Then you can select the default when you like. You always have the choice to change the default, too.

Depending on what browser you use, you’re often presented with a choice to either embed or link the image. Embedding the image is simply making it a standard format of your email while Linking it means it resides on a web server and is downloaded to the mail every time a recipient opens it.

A recipient wouldn’t be able to tell the difference as it’ll appear as an embedded image but it is important to note the difference between these two methods. When making a choice in what format to go with, consider that most emails are check via mobile phone, and it’s important that your signature is mobile friendly.

Digital Signatures have been made simple in recent times where you can access and use them via smartphones and devices. The mail app of iPhones comes equipped with tools that allow users to sign pdf files right from their phones.

There are several other apps on the market that grant the usage of digital signatures like PDF.co, Adobe Fill & Sign, Word, Sign Now, and Acrobat. Employing the use of signatures in your business emails not only secures your documents and messages but also establishes brand identity and aids in marketing your company formally, building a rapport with customers, and even boosting sales.

Including elements such as your professional title, contact information, affiliate company, a photo of you, social media icons, or a company logo sometimes play an important role in presenting a professional look of your signature as it is most likely easier for people to believe a mail sent by an individual as compared to just a company.

Signatures have also been known to drive conversions and ROI. Sticking to a simpler design with relevant information helps make for an effective signature.

Add signature to email documents using PDF.co

1. In this tutorial we will add a signature to an email document using PDF.co and Zapier. First, let’s choose Gmail as the App and New Attachment as the Trigger Event.

You will learn how to create a digital signature image and use it for your documents at any time.

You can use other email providers and choose a similar trigger.

2. Next, let’s set up the Trigger.

• In the Label/Mailbox field, kindly select INBOX.
• In the Search String, please type subject:Document is ready for your signature.

We assign specific subjects to certain PDF templates. In order to pull the correct email and attachment, you can specify a Search String.

3. When the test Trigger returns a We found an attachment! message, we can move on to the next step.

4. Then, let’s set up PDF.co to add our signature to the email attachment. To do that, kindly select PDF.co as the App and PDF Filler as the Action Event.

5. Let’s configure PDF Filler with our email and signature data. Here’s a great tutorial that covers topics such as drawing your signature, finding coordinates, signature storage, and more. Now, you can make a digital signature with this automation and save your time.

• In the Source PDF field, select 1. Attachment: (Exists but not shown).
• In the Text Object field, add your name using this format x;y;pagenumber;name;fontsize;fontname
• In the Images field, add your signature using this format x;y;pagenumber;urltoimage;linktoopen;width;height
• In the Output field, enter your desired output filename.

6. It’s time to send our PDF Filler request to PDF.co. Please click on the Test & Review button.

7. Our test was a success. PDF.co generated a URL to access the signed document. Kindly copy and paste the URL in your browser to see the result and make the necessary adjustments if needed.

8. Fantastic! We have successfully signed our email document.

Screenshot of Signed Email Document

You can add another step in your Zap to either send the signed email document back to the recipient or save it in cloud storage such as Google Drive.

• fill PDF forms, applications, contracts (usingpdf/edit/add endpoint)
• generate rich formatted PDF from HTML or URL to an existing web page (using pdf/convert/from/html and pdf/convert/from/url endpoints)
• split PDF files (using pdf/split to extract a range of pages from the existing PDF)
• merge PDF documents (using pdf/merge endpoint for example, contract + cover + additional)
• merge PDF, documents, images, emails, ZIP files into PDF (using pdf/merge2 endpoint)
• add images, text, scanned signatures to an input PDF (using pdf/edit/add endpoint)
• convert DOCX/XLSX to PDF (using pdf/convert/from/doc endpoint)