Tip #151 - Inserting "Images" Into Your Signature Line, or IntoThe Body of Your SmartAdvocate Email Templates

In a prior Tip Of The Week, we discussed how to create a signature line for emails sent from SmartAdvocate. That discussion prompted the question of how to embed an image into a signature line and/or how to embed a picture into the body of the email itself – especially in email templates.
 
Here is an example of a "Welcome Email" generated from an Email Template with pictures embedded:

Here is the Email Template used to generate the ‘Welcome Email’ shown above:

There are two ways to accomplish this task: The simplest is to insert an image or picture directly into your email. The other option, is to have it hosted externally and then insert it into the signature line or email body from the hosted location. Since there is no direct image-insert system in the Email panel, you would however, need to go to the external location, copy the image, and then paste it into the panel.
 
Please Note: Be aware that some email clients do not automatically load external links, so the picture or images would just appear as blank boxes. (Some email systems give recipients the option of downloading images upon receipt). Also, if the recipient was to reply to the email or forward it without loading the links, the blank boxes will always be there, i.e., the image link may be lost. It all depends on the recipient's email client.

Of the available options, the best approach would be to insert the image data directly into the signature (or email template). If you have a local copy of the image, you can copy that image and then paste it in the panel, and it will go in as image data rather than a local file link (we have seen emails generated using the foregoing approach behave somewhat unpredictably as it depends on the specific image-viewing program you are copying the image from.) You can check whether the image or picture went in as image data by clicking the HTML tab (located in the bottom left corner of the email template). If it looks like a short link, it did not go in as image data, and if it looks like a huge wall of gibberish, then it did.

The SmartAdvocate email system automatically converts image data to an embedded image attachment when sending, and that generally works well for most recipient email clients. The downside here, though, is that you can’t currently use the "Use Outlook to Send Emails" (accessed under User Preferences) option if your signature/email body contains image data – the Outlook plugin does not know how to convert it and refuses to display it, so you just get a broken image icon.