Why are Email Signatures Important?
An email signature is usually a few lines of text placed at the bottom of an email message, forum or newsgroup that identifies you, your company, and your product or service. People don’t fully understand the effectiveness of email signatures and therefore lose out on an opportunity to gain new customers.
There are many ways you can create your email signature, but having a poor signature can hurt your professional reputation. With that said, here are some general instructions that can guide you in formatting a professional signature.
Email Signature Tips
- Include your name, your phone number, email address, company or website title, and your website address.
- Compact your information into fewer lines by using pipes (|) or colons (::) to separate the text.
- Keep it short (four lines is standard).
- Recommend matching the theme and personality of your website.
- Simple plain text is best; skip bright colors, special fonts, and graphics.
- Avoid including multiple phone numbers and email addresses. Pick your contact preference and get rid of the rest.
- Include links to your most important social media profiles, only if they are appropriate.
- Skip your mailing address — not every recipient wants or should have access to that information.
- Use the signature delimiter (– ) to help your signature get recognized
- Be careful with HTML formatting because it may not appear how you want it to for everyone.
- Optimize your logo or other graphics, upload the files to your server, and use an absolute URL.
- Consider using an email signature service. Here are a few to check out:
- Instead of using hyperlinks, be sure to write out the full URL to ensure that the link will go through in the sent message.
- Update your signature on your cell phone if you frequently use it to send messages. Here are some easy guidelines on popular devices:
- Reconsider including a quote; you never know when you might offend someone or give the wrong impression.
- Avoid including a legal disclaimer unless required to do so.
Examples of Email Signatures
Default version:
–
John Smith
President | Top Web Design USA
555-555-5555 | john@johnsmith.com | http://www.websiteurl.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/twittername | LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/linkedinname
Replies:
–
John Smith
555-555-5555
http://www.websiteurl.com
To optimize the effectiveness of your email signature, you need to also track them. You’re your website address is written out in your signature file, you can redirect it by tracking the full URL. The best way to go about this is by using ad tracking software. This allows you to keep track of any traffic that comes your way through your email signature.
