It might not seem that important. And true, it might not win or lose you business. But, an email signature that is smart, consistent across your organisation and informative can benefit your company in more ways than you might first think. You wouldn’t hand a prospective client a scrap of paper with your details scrawled onto it, so why ignore your email signature?
Main reasons for an email signature
Legitimacy and professionalism
In our view, this is the main benefit of an email signature. Having a cohesive and well designed signature not only shows you are a well established and professional business but also shows you care about the details, which is never a bad thing to convey.
Important information at your client’s fingertips
Ever hunted about for a phone number or contact details of someone and not been able to find them? It’s frustrating and could ultimately lead to the loss of sales or business. If you have the chance to put your contact details, social media channels and company name at your clients finger tips then why wouldn’t you?
Making it personal
Adding a picture can help personalise a normally in-personal method of communication. It can help to make a personal association and connection with you.
Online business card
Your signature is your digital business card and is a brilliant way of connecting with customers and showing how open you are to communication.
Branding
Your logo, colours and theme are important to reinforce your company identity, so don’t miss the chance to get it across.
Brand recognition
By creating a cohesive email signature for all your employees you will improve your brand recognition. The key benefits to this are that you will be at the forefront of your clients mind, they will be more loyal and they will recognise your brand more readily.
What to Think About and Include
Brand consistency
Try to stick to the colours on your website, brochures, letterheads and so on. Help give some synergy and engender trust from the recipient.
Consistency across your team
Each of your employees should sign off their emails with the same style of signature. You should also use the same body font and colour to help bring all of the electronic communications into line with each other. If your email strings look messy and disorganised to an outside client then this could give the wrong message.
Link it up
You should provide links to your social networks and website in your email signature. It may help to increase your followers on social media and if your client ever needs the information it is there at the click of a mouse. On a related point, it is good to make sure all of your social media networks have consistent branding you can do this by ensure the profile and cover images are in the same vain. See our previous blog post for help with your social media images.
Legal text
There are certain legal messages that are good to make clear and by having it in your email signature you can ensure it is sent to your clients/suppliers each time you send an email. A good (short) example of a simple legal disclaimer is below:
If you’re not the intended recipient, then this email and its contents are not for you to read or reproduce.
You can make it more complicated if you feel it is needed but try not to go over the top. It’s also a good idea to include your legal company name, VAT number, company number and registered address.
Easy on the images
Where possible don’t include contact information within an image. The image might not load for a variety of reason and it’s always good to allow the receiver to copy and paste the information if needed.
Keep it simple
Despite all of the above, try not to over egg the signature. That means no gifs of dancing cats or images that take up the half a screen; that’s just plain annoying.
Remember the basics
It’s easy to get carried away with a fancy design and forget to include vital information, as a minimum we would recommend you include:
- Name
- Position
- Phone number
- Website
- Logo
Optional extras include:
- Head-shot
- Social Icons and links
- Legal Disclaimer
Signing off
We hope the above is helpful and, if you need any help in designing your email signature please just get in touch, we’ll happy to help you.