On average, office workers send 40 emails per day, which means that every day, they are offering 40 opportunities to market themselves and their businesses. Most people treat their email signatures as afterthoughts, which is a missed opportunity. Your email signature is your first chance to present who you are, how to reach you, and how to find out more about you in email campaigns.
You wouldn’t be taking full advantage of the opportunity to connect, engage, and motivate the person you’re emailing if your signature consisted of just your name and a few points of contact information.
However, you don’t want to go overboard. Stuffing your signature with too many links and information is just plain self-promotion.
Here are some suggestions as you create your signature: Your preference, your organization’s culture, and even your industry will play a role in this.
Email Signatures: What to Include in Them?
An email signature is a block of text that is automatically added to the end of an email message. It typically includes the sender’s name, contact information, and a brief personal message. Email signatures can be a helpful way to add a personal touch to your messages and make it easy for recipients to get in touch with you.
There are a few things to keep in mind when creating an email signature. First, make sure that your signature is no longer than four lines. Second, avoid using too much HTML or images in your signature, as this can make it difficult to read. Finally, be sure to proofread your signature before sending it out to avoid any embarrassing typos.
Email signatures are important for several reasons. First, they can help build credibility and trust by providing recipients with more information about who sent the message. Second, email signatures can be used as a marketing tool to promote products or services, or drive traffic to a website. Finally, email signatures can help manage expectations by setting forth clear guidelines for how and when messages should be responded to.
The first and last name
You should always include your name, as with snail mail correspondence, so the person you are emailing knows who sent it. This appears in your email signature, often as the first line.
Identifying information (such as Department and Job Title)
A short description of your affiliations should follow your name. Your affiliations could include your job title, your company or organization, or even your department.
As you build a relationship with the recipient, your name will eventually be its draw, but providing this information adds more context to the conversation and your role in it. Furthermore, affiliation with a recognizable organization lends you more credibility. You get your reader’s attention when you use this technique.
Information on Secondary Contacts
Additionally, the recipient should know how else to contact you by including secondary contact information. Any other method of communication you want to highlight can be included as secondary information. Instead of giving up your direct line, you can promote your website — a passive way to open communication channels without overwhelming yourself.
A strong social media presence is an important part of your brand since it shows people what you care about and helps you gain a following. What someone posts on social media and how they present themselves can tell you a lot about them.
This is why including a link to your social media profiles in your email signature is a good idea. In addition to enhancing your brand, it enables people to find new ways to reach and follow you.
Try to limit the number of icons on your webpage to five or six, even if you are active on a lot of social media sites. Focus on growing your business or building your brand by focusing on the accounts that matter most.
Researchers from NeoMam Studios claim that people are more likely to read content if it is presented in color. That’s very helpful. In addition, icons save a lot of space in places where you might be packing a lot of information.
The call to action
Including a call-to-action in your email signature is one of the smartest things you can do. CTAs for email signatures should be simple, current, non-pushy, and in line with your email style, making them appear as postscripts and not sales pitches. A CTA should align with your current business goals and should be updated whenever they change.
Bookable links
If you often email back and forth with colleagues and clients about booking meetings, include a link for booking your calendar right in your email signature so they can do so easily.
Disclaimers and Legal Requirements
To protect private information, industries like legal, financial, and insurance have specific guidelines for email usage and etiquette. It is therefore important to check what regulations your industry has in place as well as to include a disclaimer regarding email transmissions in your signature.
Here is an example of an email disclaimer offered by Mail-Signatures:
“The message’s contents are confidential, and it is only intended for the recipient indicated in the message. Without the written permission of the sender, its contents may not be distributed to any third party. If you received this message by mistake, please reply to it and delete it so that we can prevent similar mistakes in the future.”
Photograph or logo
Your email signature can be spiced up with an image. Using a professional photo in your signature can help recipients associate your name with your face, even if they’ve never met you. As an alternative, you can include the company’s logo or iconic brand identity in the email to increase brand recognition.
The pronouns
Adding your preferred pronouns to your email signature is helpful, even if it’s not commonly done and not required, especially if you’re sending emails to people you don’t know. A gender-neutral name also removes ambiguity.
Email Signature Examples
If you’re looking for some inspiration, here are a few examples of well-designed email signatures:
Example 1:
John Smith | Sales Manager
john@smith.com
555-555-1234
Example 2:
Jane Doe
Sales Manager | Company
www.janedoe.com
jane@doe.com
555-555-1234
Example 3:
Mary Jane
mary@jane.com
555-555-1234
I’d love to hear from you!
Example 4:
Mike Smith
mike@smith.com
555-555-1234
Social Media Icons
As you can see, there are a few different ways to approach an email signature. The important thing is to keep it brief and to include only the most relevant information. If you include too much information, it can be overwhelming for the recipient.
If you’re not sure what to include in your signature, a good rule of thumb is to keep it to your name, email address, and phone number. You can also include a link to your website or blog if you have one. And, of course, don’t forget to proofread before you hit send!
The Best Way to Write an Email Signature For Email Writers
Clearly state your name, affiliation, and secondary contact information
Your name is listed first, as you might expect. You should follow your name with your affiliation and contact information.
If you are affiliated with your employer, your school, or a similar organization that you feel is important to your recipients, you may indicate this. In the long run, your name should speak for itself, but using a prominent brand name – and even its logo – ensures your readers will pay attention to your message.
It is also important to have secondary contact information. It may not be a good idea to promote your phone number, but you can promote your website as a way to open up the lines of communication without being flooded with marketing you don’t want.
Consistent and simple colors
You can make your email signature more effective when your branding is consistent. It’s a nice touch to include color in your email signature because it will make your email stand out. When using colors, stick to just one or two, and use dark text with them.
Use a hierarchy of designs
An important part of good design is presenting your information in a digestible form. You’ll want to use hierarchy in your email signature to direct readers’ attention to what they should read first since it is more of a list of information than a compelling story.
Track links
Include your CTA and social media icons in your email signature. But do people click on them?
Make sure the links in your signature are trackable — just like you would any other link in your email — if you want to know whether they’re attracting clicks and making an impact.
Make use of space dividers
Even though you do not want too much information in your email signature, there is a way to fit a lot of text into a compact area like this one without sacrificing design.
A disclaimer or call-to-action can be inserted here to separate different types of information, such as your name and contact information, your logo, or even your company name.
Ensure that your contact number has an international prefix
Make sure to include the country code for your country when you list your contact phone number if you work with people around the world. When you’re not used to dialing international prefixes, it’s easy to overlook, but having it right there is so helpful for your international colleagues and clients. If you don’t know your country’s code, here is a list.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our article on how to create an email signature that’s professional and effective. Email signatures are important because they are more than just your name, they provide the recipient with information about your company that helps them identify your brand. If you want your voice to be heard, it is important to make sure you implement an email signature that is professional and effective.
It’s important to ensure that your email looks professional and allows all of the recipients to know who you are and what you do. A signature is one way to accomplish this and should be used consistently across all of your emails.
We hope that you found this article informative and that you will consider including one in your future emails.
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