Skip to content 
Despite the availability of many methods for exchanging information, email is still extensively used by organizations. More than half of the world population are using email at present, and the number is expected to grow over 4.3 billion by the end of 2023, according to Radicati Group. With billions of emails sent out every day, it is no wonder to find your messages in the spam folder of your prospect’s mailbox. If you do not wish this to happen, be vigilant about every minute detail of your email content.
An email signature is one such part which most of the marketers overlook assuming it has nothing to do with the performance of email marketing campaign. But for your surprise, this tiniest portion of the message acts as your business identity and can nurture reliability and professionalism at ease. Now, it’s time to check whether your email signatures are up-to-date and how it looks like in multiple screen sizes. Let’s get started with it.
1. Pick a Signature
It is the first and foremost step to begin. You must have at least one email signature in place. It is no surprise to find some organizations who miss this basic yet crucial part of an email. They do not realize that it is more fundamental to nourish the bond with the recipient. Also, there are times where the clients or prospects need your information for further communication. The absence of signature will not just leave them crazy but also make them lose trust in your brand. Therefore, always make sure you have a specific email signature for your company.
2. Include Your Details
It’s essential that your email signature must make it clear who you are. But, the question is – How much information you are supposed to include in the email signature? Although every company has a different role to play, the signature must consist of some of the necessary details as a minimum requirement such as,
- Name
- Company Name
- Your Title
- Department
- Phone Number
The only idea here is to gain the trust of the recipient by being transparent about your company or role within the organization.
3. Make it Mobile-Friendly
“Email Client Market Share Trends” report by Litmus explains the importance of this tip. It says mobile opens accounted for 46% of email opens, followed by webmail at 35%, and desktop at 18%. So, almost 3 out of 5 customers use mobile to view your email message. Therefore, having a mobile signature is vital for any business. Once you design a mobile-friendly signature, spend some time to check how it looks on different screen sizes.
Also, please remove the text underneath your message such as, “Sent from my iPhone.” It doesn’t sound cool anymore and highlights your unprofessionalism to the viewers.
4. Create a Simple Design with a Headshot of Yours
Always aim to come up with a clean, clear, and stable design for your email signature. Otherwise, it may confuse the recipients and put them off instantly. It should contain your key contact details, advertising message, social media icons, and a headshot. Including a picture of the sender will give a fine touch of personality for your email. However, make sure the photo used in the signature is professional. Bear in mind some of the critical points while creating a simple design:
- Don’t make your signature too long.
- Contact details should be in the same color as the email body.
- You can use different colors for links.
- Don’t include more than seven lines.
- Limit number of design elements in your email body.
- Maintain fixed font size and type throughout the content.
- Use dividers to separate the content so readers can scan quickly.
- Don’t share many details about yourself.
- Make use of white spaces to give it an elegant look.
5. Tell People How to Reach You via Contact and Social Media
Email provides the right space to share your contact information with the interested prospects. So, make sure to include the phone number, email address, physical address, and Skype address along with your name. Also, encourage the recipients to follow you on social media by including the links to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other channels on the email signature. It can bring more traffic to your website, increase the number of followers, and ultimately raise the conversion rate. Moreover, it makes it easy for your customers to know your company better.
6. Include Links to Your Website/Blog /Case Study
Your potential clients are just a click away from your awe-inspiring product. Therefore, make it easy for them to navigate there by providing the links in your email signature. Take advantage of the fact that all your recipients are already online. You can promote your blog, website, case study, or featured products in this section. Make sure you shorten the URL to make the layout as clear as possible. By providing the links to dynamic contents such as blog or case studies, you can encourage the customers to read your latest content and also enjoy the advantage of driving more traffic. Especially, sharing a case study link will boost confidence in the minds of the customers. Who doesn’t like to hear stories from happy clients?
You can include two types of link in the email signature – Text links and Image links. For business email signatures, logo or image links are a lot more effective. In case if you use a text link, make the text more appealing with different color or underline it.
7. Inform About Upcoming Events
Are you organizing any trade show? Is there any conference where you will be speaking on specific topic? If your answer is yes, we can’t stop recommending this tip enough. Promoting the events via email signature is much more useful than you might have thought. So, change your professional email signature to reflect the current on-goings in your company. Come up with a simple banner consisting of a link to a page describing the event and venue details. Place this banner right below your email signature.
With this banner, you can easily highlight news about your company, tell your audience about upcoming events, and so much more. Actively leveraging the email signature for marketing purpose always works better.
8. Sign Off Professionally
What’s the best way to sign off? It’s a simple yet important question that needs an answer. For your business email signoff, we advise you not to make it too personal or too casual by using statements like, “With much love.” While some may argue there is no right or wrong when it comes to signing off as it totally depends on the context or the relationship with the recipient. But, it’s always a good idea to follow professional email sign off practices, such as “yours sincerely,” “Thank you again,” or “best regards.”
Sometimes, you can also use the statements such as “Looking forward,” “Take care,” or “Speak with you soon” if you know the person reasonably well. Neither this sentence is formal nor offensive.
9. Keep the Signature Consistent
The number one mistake which marketers make while using email signature is inconsistency across the establishment because each sender has his own. For instance, one might use an old logo of the company; the next might be using a logo of different size. It is highly crucial to maintain the consistency of the signature as it represents your brand as a whole. Therefore, make them recognizable with the same branding that identifies your business, be it a logo, font, or color. And, use this standard template across your company.
Make sure all the approved signs that are professional with a stylish format. It helps in branding by adding credibility.
10. Centrally Manage the Signatures
Last but not least, make sure you manage all your email signatures centrally. This tip is especially useful if more than ten employees are sending an email every day. With this management technique, you need not worry whether the email signatures are consistent and professional on various platforms. Also, you can make use of powerful analytical tools such as send-on-behalf-of signatures, geo-tracking, data tracking (open rate, click rate, etc.), management of different signatures to different groups, planning campaign banners, and more.
So, the next question is – How to manage professional signatures centrally? You can have a dedicated member in your team who designs the signatures for everyone with the help of Office 365 and Exchange Server. He/she must use the HTML snippet and also set the rule for the created templates. There are specific tools online that doesn’t require you to code and helps you deploy the email signature quickly.
Bottom Line
Choosing the best email signature for your business is as important as building the right marketing strategy. Your signature has a story to tell which reflects your brand personality. Therefore, employ at least a few tips mentioned in this article to improve the performance of what is likely to be one of your most prevalent forms of business communication. Smartly leveraging the signatures will not just make you look professional but also boosts lead generation process drastically.
