#emailtip Use Gravatar to set a profile image

gravatarThis takes two minutes and is totally worth it – register your sending address with Gravatar, add a profile picture, and certain email clients will add the icon next to your emails in the inbox. A quick test shows that it’s supported in Sparrow – which has quite a high takeup amongst designers and mac users – and also Postbox app. We’ll take a look at support elsewhere and add an update.



  • http://twitter.com/ItsAndyD Andy Devoto

    Have others used this? It definitely sounds pretty great. I want to set this up for our company’s email, but when I tried to set it up they ask for your email address then send you a link to confirm. We use a subdomain ( @e.company.com ) which is pretty typical for email marketing, and that email address doesn’t actually go anywhere. We have a different “reply-to” address. I’m going to try going through their contact us page, but just curious if others had this issue.

  • Mike

    @twitter-45910404:disqus I’ve got exactly the same problem. I’ve just asked our ESP and I’ll post here if they come up with a solution.

  • Mike

    @twitter-45910404:disqus My ESP allows me to add an email address the emails to our subdomain email address are forwarded on to so I was able to set this up. Hopefully yours does the same.

  • http://twitter.com/ItsAndyD Andy Devoto

    Thanks Mike. Here’s the response I received from Gravatar:

    “Hi,

    To set up an address with a Gravatar account you’d need
    to be able to click the confirmation link that is sent via email.

    There isn’t another way to confirm and add the address.”

    I’m going to try your suggestion. Not sure why I hadn’t already done that. Thanks!

  • http://twitter.com/ThomasGrimes Thomas Grimes

    Looking forward to giving this a try with Gravatar. I have just recently associated our sending addresses with our company’s Google+ accounts, so our G+ profile image, recent posts/content will show next to our email in Gmail inboxes.

    I initially ran into the same problem as Andy. Our ESP has an auto responder sent to replies, so we cannot check the mailbox for the confirmation email. I was able to change the reply rules to send all replies to a specified inbox. Then I was able to receive a confirmation email and verify the sending address.

    Hope this helps!