Profile Photos

A profile photo can make your messages more recognisable — but how (and whether) it appears is controlled by the recipient’s email client, not by Overton.cloud.

How Profile Photos Work

Email protocols (SMTP, IMAP and POP3) do not include any profile photo capability. There is no field in an email message that carries your picture. Instead, the recipient’s email client decides whether to display a photo and where to source it from.

Because of this, the same message can show your photo in one client and nothing at all in another. There are two common standards a client may use to look up a sender photo: Gravatar and BIMI.

Setup Methods

Gravatar

Gravatar is the simplest option and is widely supported across email clients. It’s free.

  1. Create a Gravatar account
    Visit gravatar.com and sign up.
  2. Upload your photo
    Add the image you want to use as your profile photo.
  3. Associate it with your email address
    Link the photo to the email address you send from. Clients that support Gravatar will then display it for your messages.

BIMI

BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a newer standard aimed at organisations that want to display a brand logo. It has stricter requirements:

  • Properly configured SPF, DKIM and DMARC records.
  • A logo supplied as an SVG in the BIMI-specific format.

BIMI is primarily designed for brand logos rather than individual headshots.

Important Caveats

Display is never guaranteed

First-time recipients may not see any photo, some email clients don’t support these features at all, and corporate systems frequently block external image requests. Contacts who have saved you with their own photo will see that instead of whatever you set up.

For most individuals, Gravatar is the simpler solution — just keep in mind that photo display always depends on the recipient’s client.

Related reading: DMARC Records and IP Reputation Management.

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