A Guide to the Perfect Email Signature

The signature at the end of your email address might be the last thing on your mind when you're corresponding online. However, savvy professionals and business owners make great use of this email feature, and you should, too. Signatures are an opportunity to reach your audience with your brand and marketing style, and of course leave people with a way to contact you in the future. Although virtual business cards do exist, email signatures are a much more effective. Not using your signature – or your employees not using theirs – is a wasted opportunity. Here's a quick guide to making your email signature stand out: 

Basics
All professional email signatures should include the following elements:

• Name
• Title
• Company name
• Address
• Phone number (desk, mobile and fax, if applicable)
• Website/social media information 

These are the basic pieces of information that empower your customers and clients to reach out to you when needed. Some people include their email address on this list, but that's a waste of space. You're already talking to the other person  email, so he or she already has that information. You don't want anything unnecessary taking up space in your message. 

Another way to avoid redundancies is to set a long and short signature. Most email services have this feature, which lets you use a condensed version for replies and forwarded messages. Setting this up is definitely best practice, since it prevents you from sending long emails that repeat the same full signature over and over again. However, you should even watch length on your full signature: Never have a signature longer than 10 lines, and the shorter you can keep it, the better. 

Depending on your business, you may be legally required to include a disclaimer in your signature. Check with your legal department to see if that's the case and to be given the proper phrasing.

Style and Design
Remember, this is a marketing opportunity. Treat email signatures with the same care and consideration you'd give any other client-facing materials. If you have a logo, you should incorporate it. The same goes if you have standard company colors or fonts. The key is consistency: Even though you want your signature to stand out to your customers, you want it to blend in to your wider marketing campaign. Although you'll need to have someone with coding knowledge to build your signature, it would be best to have someone in marketing design it first. That way you'll know for sure that it's on brand. 

There are, of course, some common mistakes you should avoid when making your signature. While your company slogan is fine, don't include quotes – they distract from the brand, and can confuse clients who read them. If you use an image, make sure it's sized for the signature: Large images that are resized during formatting can jump back up to their full size if the recipient's email doesn't receive it properly, which means it will dominate the bottom of the screen. Finally, while it's OK to use an image to include a logo or picture, don't make the whole signature an image. The whole point is to give people easy access to your information: You want a signature full of copyable text and clickable links.