[Update]: This article was last updated on May 31, 2024.

For some people, animated gifs are the essence of the Internet – before them, there was nothing of interest. Gifs have opened our eyes to the magic of ultra-cute, animated kittens, memes and epic fails, to mention a few. But apart from those highly popular and reusable gifs, there is another type – simple animations which in the business world could be deemed as professional. So today, I’ll cover the idea of having animated gifs in email signatures.

Thanks to our atavistic predator instinct, nothing grabs our attention as much as a moving objects next to a static background (that is, regular email content). Animated gifs seem like they are crafted for this purpose exactly. Be careful though, as the line between “attention-grabbing” and “extremely annoying” is finer than you might think.