How to make your email signature work well with iOS 8 data detectors in mail?

I have noticed that with iOS 8, that some mails come up with the 'contact information' at the top of the mail. This is super handy when you want to quickly add a new contact from the e-mail.

The problem is that my signature does not trigger this 'contact information' to come up. I have seen other signatures where only some of the information is filled in inside of the new contact.

Is there a definition somewhere of how these detectors work, so that a signature can be crafted to properly pre-fill that newly created contact?

Solution 1:

Apple don't seem to have documented which signature formats iOS data detection will recognise as far as I can tell. All I can tell you is that the following signature format seems to work.

John Smith

T: +44 (0) 141 123 4567
E: [email protected]

Solution 2:

The "Standard from the old days of text emails was to have the footer denoted by a line that started with two dashes "-- " followed by Name, then other values could be added with a single letter denoting the the type, so E for email address, T for telephone, F fax, and more recently M for mobile.