How to create an email signature? – Emails are the backbone of any professional conversation. These are the formal ways to talk business, without memes or anything casual or unimportant. As emails are considered important, so important are email signatures. Email signatures include information about you, your organization, your work profile, a contact link, and a photo or logo of you or your business.
It would help if you looked forward to creating an email signature. Before creating an email signature, you can do a little research regarding how to create and what type of email signature template will fit your requirements, per your business, work profile, and recipients.
Take a Look at the Ideal Email Signature Template.
Now, look at an ideal email signature template: what information should you include when creating your own email signature?
Your email signature should include the following:
- Your full name
- The designation, department (affiliation info)
- Secondary contact info.
- Social profile icons (avoid links, use icons instead)
- Call-to-action (CTA)
- Booking links
- Legal requirements/disclaimers (If any)
- Photo or logo
- Pronouns
Also Read: Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses
Now, let’s have a detailed look at this email signature template:
How to Create an Email Signature: Step-by-Step Guide
Your Full Name
As you understand, this is the primary requirement. Your recipient, whom you are approaching via email, should know who and where the email is from, and providing this information is the purpose of creating email signatures.
Make sure you write your name in a proper font and size to grab the reader’s attention before anything else in the email.
Designation/Department (Affiliation Info)
You must include your firm and designation in your signature, as this adds weight to it. If you are working in a renowned organization, it will not only make the recipient more attentive towards your mail but also make them take you seriously. So, if you’ve got perks, use them.
For example, if you are a co-founder of a business, you will write your designation along with the name of your business just below your name. See the example given below:
Your Name,
Co-founder, your firm’s name.
Secondary Contact Info
Secondary contact info is another way a reader can reach out to you if you are unavailable via email for some reason. It may include a contact number, a fax number, or any other communication method you prefer.
Also, if you want to grow your roots beyond the current firm through which you connect with your recipients, secondary contact info will help you do that.
Social Profile Icons
Social media is a part of our lives in this online era. Social media helps people learn about your work; you can easily find and connect with like-minded people who need your services and with whom you can collaborate. So, adding social media handles to your email signature template is a good idea. But the point to keep in mind here is that you should insert your social profile icon instead of the links, so you can fill your email signature with as much info as possible while keeping it neat and organised.
Also, keep your social media pages updated if you add them to your signature.
Call to action (CTA)
Adding a CTA in your email signature is also a clever idea. Your CTA should look subtle and not like an advertisement. Also, when you want to update your CTA to align with a new business goal, please choose a new CTA and update it accordingly. To create a visually appealing, brand-consistent CTA, consider using the tools provided by Tailor Brands. They offer a variety of branding solutions that can help ensure your email signature aligns perfectly with your overall brand image.
Also Read: Importance of Digital Marketing
Booking links
If you want your clients to get access quickly, add booking links to your email signature so they can schedule a meeting with you at a time that works for you and their convenience. Sometimes people want to reach out to you but need a proper channel, and booking links can help you both with that. So, consider adding booking links to your signature to make it more useful. It is a philosophical idea.
Legal requirements/disclaimers (If any)
Sometimes, you are in a field where an email sent to a recipient is entirely confidential, and you don’t want it shared with unauthorized parties, so a disclaimer comes into play. You can add a legal disclaimer to the email stating the requirements. For example, you can write that this email is confidential, and if you think you are not the correct recipient to receive this, please reply and then delete the mail, as it is a hidden text and implies copyright. It generally happens in the defence, finance, legal, and insurance industries.
Apart from that, we sometimes receive emails from certain sites that include a disclaimer stating they are system-generated and that we should not reply.
Photo or logo
A picture will add significant value and dimension to your email signature. You will be more influential to people with a photo of yourself besides your firm’s logo design or your name. It will quickly draw their attention to the message, as they will consider the person or company along with the text.
Pronouns
If you have a gender-neutral name or you are not using your photo in the signature, you can add pronouns according to your gender, like he/him or she/her, so that if the reader writes you back, they would have an idea of whom they are connecting with.
Now, along with these, a few things should be noted to make a professional email signature:
- Use design hierarchy; write your name, then your designation, and then your firm’s name.
- Use space dividers
- Use colors, keeping them simple and consistent. Make them in sync with the colors of the logo or picture you inserted
- Include the international prefix in your contact numbers
- Make the links trackable.
- Make your design mobile-friendly.
Also Read: The Ultimate Email Marketing Checklist
Conclusion
To sum it all up, creating an email signature means putting the right things in the right places. Use design hierarchy while writing the name, designation, and firm. Add relevant contact details, booking links, an image, or a logo mentioning the disclaimer and pronouns, keep a check on the colors you use, and you are good to go.
