Profile photo: put your face next to your emails in Gmail

When a prospect opens one of your emails in Gmail, the little circle next to your name is your Google Account photo. It is set on Google's side, once per mailbox, and it follows that address everywhere Google shows it: Gmail, Calendar invites, Meet, Docs comments. DirectREI sends from your mailbox exactly as Gmail would, so whatever photo the account has is what your recipients see. No photo means they see a colored circle with your initial.

Set it (about 2 minutes per mailbox)

1. In a browser, sign in as the mailbox you send from, for example jane@yourbizoffers.com. If you are signed into several Google accounts, check the account picker in the top-right corner first. The photo belongs to whichever account is active.
2. Open myaccount.google.com and go to Personal info. Under Basic info, click Photo (the direct link is myaccount.google.com/profile/photo/edit).
3. Click Change or Add profile picture, upload your image, drag the crop to a square that frames your face, and save.
4. Repeat for every mailbox in your rotation. Each address has its own photo. If a teammate sends from their own mailbox, they set theirs while signed in as themselves.

There is a second door to the same setting inside Gmail itself: the gear icon → See all settings → General → My picture. It changes the same Google Account photo, so use whichever you find first.

Picking the image

• A JPG or PNG, square, at least 250 × 250 pixels. Gmail shows it at about 40 pixels wide, so a tight head-and-shoulders crop reads far better than a full-body shot or a wide logo.
• Face or logo? For a personal mailbox like jane@…, use a face. For a shared address like info@… or offers@…, a clean logo on a solid background works. Avoid busy backgrounds and text, which turn to mush at that size.
• Use the same photo on every mailbox you send from under your name. A prospect who gets your follow-up from a second address should recognize you instantly.

Google Workspace accounts (the mailboxes from Sending domains)

If you bought a domain through Sending domains: buy a domain in-app and add more mailboxes, each mailbox you created in Google Admin is a Workspace user, and the steps above work the same way once you sign in as that user. Two things to know:

• As the Workspace admin you can set a photo for any user without signing in as them: admin.google.com → Directory → Users → open the user → click their avatar → upload.
• If a user reports that the Photo option is greyed out, the admin has to allow it: Admin console → Directory → Directory settings → Profile editing → tick Photo. Brand-new Workspaces sometimes ship with this off.

What recipients actually see

• Gmail (web and app) shows it. That includes anyone on Google Workspace, which is most business inboxes. It can take a few hours after you save before it appears to other people, so do not panic if a test email to yourself still shows initials right away.
• Other mail apps do not. Outlook, Apple Mail, and Yahoo show their own avatar or nothing. The Google photo only travels between Google accounts. That is a Gmail-only detail, not something DirectREI can change.
• Animated GIFs do not work. Google accepts the upload but keeps only the first frame, and Gmail never animates the sender circle. If you want animation in your emails, that is a different feature (an image in the email body or signature), and it comes with a deliverability cost on cold outreach because it turns a plain-text email into one with a remote image. Ask before adding one to a campaign.

Checklist

1. Every mailbox in Settings → Email has a photo set at Google.
2. Same photo on every address you send from under one name.
3. Square, cropped tight, face visible at thumbnail size.
4. Send yourself a test from DirectREI a few hours later and open it in Gmail to confirm.