What Is An Email Signature?
Email signatures are simple: they’re a little block of text that you can automatically add to the end of every email you send. The point is to save a smidgen of time when you’re sending an email. Most people who use them include…
- Their full name
- Personal/business contact details like phone number, address, fax etc.
- Social media links
- A link to their website
Fairly basic, but useful stuff. If you want to make your email signature more interesting, you could include a motivational, inspirational or funny quote. It all depends on who you’re likely to be emailing and what you think is going to make a good impression. Email signatures are generally 3 or 4 lines long, so we’re not talking about an essay here—just a brief note at the end of your email.
Best Practices
So if you’re thinking of writing an email signature, there are most definitely a few titbits of best practice that you should follow. Here are three things you absolutely have to think about if you’re designing an email signature.
- Does It Render Well? Double check how it looks on different email clients and devices.
- Brand It! Use the business colour scheme and style guide to style your signature. It’ll help your business make a consistent impression. Use a business-wide template.
- Be Social. Include links to any business social media, or personal accounts if that’s relevant.
- Use an Image. A tiny colour image will help your client/customer remember you better. Include a tiny profile picture or a logo.
- You could include a call to action: ‘Click here to see my latest blog posts on X, Y and Z’ for example.
Why Are They Important?
Now, nobody’s going to tell you that an email signature was what made the difference between closing a deal and missing out on one. But they can help you build towards that sale, mainly because they can be genuinely useful for a client. If you’ve been communicating through email, but your client needs to give you a call, they have an easy way of finding your number. Or alternatively, if you want to direct your client to your social media or website, it’s right there in the signature
Another point is that they help you build a consistent impression. A branded email signature looks good. And if you’re in an industry where you feel comfortable including some kind of funny quote in your sign-off, you’ll be giving off a good impression that way too. Signing off with just a ‘Kind Regards’—well, there’s nothing wrong with that, but you should really be taking advantage of the opportunity to go a little further and sign off with something a little more useful. It’s the same as having a tagline for your business. You don’t need one, but you can benefit from having a good one.
What Not To Do
Just as important as following best practices is knowing what not to do.
- Is It Suitable? If you think a quote like “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day!” is absolutely hilarious, that’s great, but will your clients? If not, either turn it off or change it when you send emails externally.
- Is It Professional? Say for example that someone designed your very own email signature, but, to put it kindly, they don’t have a good eye for style! Mismatched fonts at different sizes, clashing colours and inconsistency all come across as unprofessional and will lose you leads.
- Don’t Overdo It. If you’ve loaded your signature with every detail under the sun- from contact details to quotes, links and pictures- do you think that gives a good impression? If you got what looked like a very long email that turned out to be three lines plus a 10 line signature, what would you think? Only include whatever your client might need.
- Bare Bones Aren’t Enough. If all you’re including in your signature is a sign-off, your name and maybe a logo, that’s a missed opportunity. Go back to the drawing board and think about how else you can make your email signature work for you.
- Don’t list your email address with the rest of your personal details. Just… Why?
But what if you don’t have the time or energy to design or write the content for your own email signature? Well, lucky for you, you can find a CRM that’ll do the hard work for you.
Email Signature Managers
It’s actually fairly easy to design an email signature template and then implement it across the board. All you need are email signature managers. With a little bit of software magic, you can set your signature to automatically show the details of whoever sends it, but with the same design for everyone. It’s so simple that you’ll wonder why you ever bothered coding them yourself!
The best thing is that most CRMs let you design email signatures and they should also let you design other useful stuff like quotes, invoices and email newsletters. So you can make sure that not only does your email signature look good, but so does everything else, and most importantly they’re consistent across the board.
What Do I Do Now?!
Email signatures are a nifty way to save a little bit of time, and can ever so slightly up your marketing game. A professional-looking email signature is going to make your business look ten times- well- more professional! Not only that, but it’ll make it that much easier for your leads and clients to actually get in touch with you. So if you’re all about continual improvement, then your email signature should be next on your list!