Want to know one of the most overlooked places to market your business?
It’s your email signature.
As a business owner, your email signature is more than just a name and title scribbled at the bottom of your email. In fact, it’s a key opportunity to promote your brand, establish credibility, and build trust with every message you send.
An optimized email signature lets you tell readers who you are and what you do, in addition to giving people a link where they find out more about your company.
Even better, it’s simple to get a professional email signature in place!
All it takes to craft an email signature that conveys just the right amount of information is a little thought and consideration. While you need to add more than just your name and phone number, you also don’t want to slam your reader with a wall of links, images and social profiles.
In this blog post, you’ll learn exactly what you need to include in your email signature to make it an effective marketing tool, plus, some quick tips and tricks for building one that leaves an impression on your readers.
Let’s get started!
What to include in a great email signature
Full name
Let’s start with the basics. Your preferred name should ideally always be prominently placed in your signature. Usually, this is the first line of text.
Take a look at Eman Zabi’s signature below. Notice how her name is highlighted in bold? This makes sure her name is the first thing the reader sees.
Affiliation info
Your affiliations might include your job title, position, and company or brand name. This information adds context to the conversation and lends you credibility, so your reader is more likely to take your message more seriously.
For example, let’s look at Eman’s signature again:
Her name is immediately followed by her affiliation information (Founder, Copy Chief), which informs the reader of her position and the name of her marketing agency.
Contact info
Your contact information could include your phone number, office address, website details, and more. Providing these details in your signature makes it easy for your recipients to reach out to you if they want to connect.
Tip: If you’re not comfortable sharing your phone number with everyone, that’s okay! Just make sure there’s another way to contact you listed in your signature.
Social profiles
If social media is part of your personal brand, it’s a good idea to include your social links in your signature. Adding your social links to your signature can also help you drive traffic to your online content—and offers another method for folks to stay in touch with you.
Call to action
This is optional, but a call to action can be super effective. Let’s say a potential lead is emailing you… ideally, what’s the next step you would want that prospect to take?
For instance, you could ask people to sign up for your newsletter, read your blog, register for an event or webinar, check out your YouTube channel or more.
Here Eman uses a simple “Learn more” CTA to direct prospects to a slide deck with more information on The Scribesmith’s services:
Tip: If a bulk of the emails you send every day involve scheduling meetings with clients and colleagues, adding a booking link to your email signature can make the process a lot smoother, and help you sidestep the back and forth.
Photo or logo
Your brand logo or a simple, professional headshot (or both!) can go a long way in building authority and trust. Plus, adding an image to your signature lets your recipients add a face to your name, which can help them remember you better.
Pronouns
Lastly, your email signature is a good place to include your pronouns, especially if you’re emailing people who don’t already know you.
Things to keep in mind when building your email signature
Keep it short
Brevity is key when it comes to making an impact through your signature. Avoid using more than 3 to 4 lines of text, and remember, less is always more here.
Develop a hierarchy
If you’re unsure of how to organise the different elements in your signature, think about the goal of your email and what you want your readers to see first.
Then based on your answer, develop a hierarchical structure to organise the different parts of your signature.
For instance, you can place your name first, followed by your affiliation information and contact details. Follow it up with social media icons, CTAs, or any other information you need to provide.
Consider these examples to get a better idea of how to structure your signature:
Keep it professional
Don’t add a link to your cat’s Instagram in your business email signature. Keep things crisp and smart by only adding crucial information and maintaining a sleek, professional design.
Design smart
Lots of email signatures fail because their design is all over the place.
We recommend keeping it clean and simple. If possible, match the colour scheme and typeface to your company’s marketing materials.
Remember, too many colours or fonts can make your signature look noisy and distracting — stick to one or two fonts, at most!
Impress with your photo
If you’re adding a headshot to your signature, keep in mind the following rules of thumb:
- Keep the image small so it loads quickly
- Use only high-quality images
- Give your image a clean, neutral background
- Dress and groom yourself professionally
- Look straight into the camera for a more approachable look
- Use a headshot rather than a full-length photo
Make links trackable
If you’re adding any hyperlinks to your signature, create a tracking link to help you attribute traffic to your signature. And check on this from time to time to optimise different elements of your signature and test what works best.
Optimize for mobile
Make sure your email signature is easy to read and clickable on mobile too. To test this, send yourself a test email and open it on your phone to make sure your text isn’t too small and the links and buttons can be easily tapped with fingers.
And that’s it! Just follow these steps and customise as needed to create a great email signature that catches your recipients’ attention and tells them more about you.
You can build your signature manually or use a professional email signature generator like WiseStamp to create your signature in minutes.
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