email signature in email, whether working for a major corporate business or a small start up is vital you are giving the right impression to your clients whether a current customer or a new one. Don’t underestimate how powerful a carefully designed digital signature can be. Through this post I plan to give you tips when designing one and in the near future, I will be guiding you on how to create one using 2 of the major email programs.
Lets get this right, your company’s professional reputation is at risk!
All good things come in small packages – keep your digital signature small – 4 lines is plenty and if you feel you have a lot of information (i,e. Telephone & Fax ) condense your details by separating them with two features as seen below :pipes ( | ) or colons (:).
Example of signature separator: T – 0845 121212 | F – 0845 141414
Im not being fat-ist but lets stay slim! – Okay , bulky logos in email signatures can ( and probably are) distracting so if you must include one keep it small. Imagine if your client is reading their email on their mobile phone ( many fat cats are always on the move ) and with the maximum resolution is 320 x 480 pixels keep it to no taller than 100 pixels. Most clients will already know who you work for either from the email telling the recipient who the email is from or the fact they have been in contact with you before.
If you have to include graphics make sure to Optimize your logo or other graphic and then upload the files to your server, and use an absolute URL.
The world is more beautiful when its minimal -as previously stated it is important to keep graphics away from your digital signature. There is a time and a place to show how much you are just like Leonardo da Vinci, this is not it. Some email clients have problems showing Graphics so plain text is usually best, colours and special fonts arent such a big deal but I recommend using colours to keep inline with your branding regardless juts incase they can be seen by the recipient just be aware that its possible they may not be seen.
Compatibility – try and steer clear of HTML when formatting your digital signature because it may not appear how you want it to be seen for several reasons, keep it simple you dont want to create yourself headaches.
‘ello! ‘ello! ello! – Avoid including multiple phone numbers and email addresses, at the end of the day your client only needs one way to contact you a proper email signature will show that you have picked your contact details carefully and gotten rid of the rest.
Hello Luke, I am your father! – Only include IM details and Skype account information if you want to be contacted that way..you dont want people adding you who you really don’t want to be able to contact you that way.
Obey the law – Never skip your office address, law requires that you include your company’s registered adress in your email signature.
To be or not to be that is the question!? – a proper email signature will not include famous quotes. It can give an unprofessional feel especially if the recipient doesn’t agree with the quote.
This is a social generation – including links to your social media pages or tweets is sometimes a good way of building new followers, why not include them in your email signature .
Whats your email again? – Include your email address. You can’t rely on various email clients to include header information in replies and forwards.
Compatiblity issues again – Create different versions of your digital signature, both in length and content and know when to use each version (i.e. use a shorter version on replies). I will give examples of these in a future blog post of how to create an email signature depending upon the hardware its displayed on.
Do NOT use links – Provide written out URLs instead of employing hyperlinks in your email to make secure the link will go through in the sent message.
Finally – make sure to Test your email signature with as many email clients as you can, especially if you use HTML.
Next blog post – How to create a proper email signature in MS Outlook & Thunderbird