Update 08/2011: GMail has since added the ability to use HTML within signatures in the online version which simplifies much of what I originally wrote.
A while ago I thought about how best to create a more modern and useful email signature. At the same time I was doing some work with Google Analytics and thought it might be useful to track how many people click on my website link in my signature. I decided to use the following bit of code which would track it:
<a style="color:#353535" title="www.ajgraham.com/" href="http://www.ajgraham.com/?utm_source=Signature&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Gmail&utm_campaign=Email%2BSignature">
www.ajgraham.com/
</a>The inline colour is used so the line isn’t the nasty default blue, change the #colour to anything you like.
Change the title attribute to whatever you like, or omit it.
The only problem with using the above is that using it natively within GMail or an online web based email will not process it, and the only way to use it would be to use the full (nasty) URL like:
http://www.ajgraham.com/?utm_source=Signature&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Gmail&utm_campaign=Email%2BSignatureThere’s a workaround though, but it forces you to use a mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook and use it as part of a signature, which is a bit of a hassle simply to track email signature clicks. Unfortunately, until GMail allows full HTML in its online signatures then this is the only automated way of doing this.
It is interesting how many people click on it though, and the level of potential granularity if you wanted to take it even further to track different sets of email correspondents.
