A Quick Guide To Email Signatures and Best Practices

If you’re like most marketers and salespeople, you’re probably constantly working to stay on top of your endless pile of emails. Email still remains the dominant form of communication, especially in the sales industry.

According to data from HubSpot, a salesperson spends 21% of their working day just writing emails. An average person receives hundreds of emails per day, so if salespeople want to create an impression, they really have to stand out.

Many marketers only focus on crafting a good subject line and body — both of which are incredibly important — but they overlook email signatures.

It turns out that having a great new email signature can be a smart means of marketing your company without doing much of anything. Your email signature can be the final piece of the sales puzzle. A well-designed, professional email signature builds credibility and increases engagement.

A signature works as an effective branding strategy allowing for deeper personalization.

Not sure where to start? No problem.

This blog post is a guide to getting started with email signature marketing. We’ll help you figure out how you can get started with your own free new email signature. Plus, a few great email signature examples and templates you can replicate.

What Is an Email Signature?

An email signature is the final piece of your email content. It should have all your contact information as well as your business logo.

Professional email signatures generally include the following elements:

Your full name, including your surname
The name of the company you work for
Your job title
Your other contact information, like an email address and a phone number
A link to your company’s website
Social media profiles (as applicable)
A disclaimer, such as a privacy policy

Let’s look at the elements included in more detail.

Name

You do introduce yourself in the email, but it’s important to add your name when you’re signing off, as well.

It looks professional and clean and humanizes your business, as well.

Company Name

When you write a sales email, you’re selling on behalf of the company. It’s important that there isn’t any ambiguity regarding the business you represent. A professional email signature will include the name of the company because it builds brand awareness.

Job Title

Your job title should also appear in your free email signature. If you’re a salesperson or a marketer, make sure the reader knows it.

Contact Information

After that, you want to add your contact information which includes your phone number. You can add your email address as a hyperlink, but it can be a bit redundant.

However, if you use Microsoft Outlook as your email provider, then recipients don’t know your email address.

By including your email address in the email signature, the lead or customer can click that and write you back quickly.

If you use EngageBay for your email marketing, you can personalize emails for plenty of aspects and automatically add the correct reply-to email address.

Company Website

Don’t forget to link to your company website in your email signatures. We’ll talk more about this later, but this is one key way to earn effortless traffic to your website.

Social Media Links

The same applies to social media channels. If your company has a presence across several social media platforms, include buttons for each of them.

Double-check all the links work before you send your emails to customers and leads.

Disclaimer

The above email signature examples should also include disclaimers.

These may cover regulatory or regional legal requirements, employer’s liability, negligent misstatements, computer virus transmission liability, breach of confidentiality, and more.

Why Are Email Signatures Important for Successful Email Marketing?

Now that you know a little more about email signature examples, you may wonder how they can further your email marketing goals.

There are many ways this happens, and we’ll explain them all now.

Web Traffic

In the last section, we touched on one simple way good business email signatures can boost your email marketing success: by giving your site free traffic.

Imagine this scenario. You’re reaching out to a lead or customer for the first time via email. The recipient opens your message.

They even scroll through all the way to the bottom.

They liked your email, but they’re not sure if they’re interested yet. Before they decide whether to respond to the email or send it to the trash, they’ll do some research on you.

This often starts by looking up your company.

Instead of them having to search for your company, your website link is right there in front of them mentioned in your signature template.

It can also be prefixed with a call to action such as ‘Visit Us’. They can click it and learn about you right away.

This scenario is a win-win. You get more traffic to your site and the lead gets the information they want.

There’s no paying for ads with this method, which makes it especially useful for small businesses or startups on a budget.

Of course, for this to work, you have to send emails often. If you only reach out to two or five people a day, the traffic numbers won’t measure up to much.

Social Traffic

Another means of using a signature for successful email marketing? By generating social traffic.

By including social sharing buttons in the online signature as well, your readers will click them. If you add a call to action button such as ‘Follow Us’, you’ll increase traffic to your social media pages and improve social impressions, as well.

This can benefit you in several ways. For starters, you build your social media audience, earning more followers.

These new followers will then hopefully engage with the content you post, such as blog content.

By clicking the blog links and other links in your email signature, they’ll get redirected to your site.

Not only do you earn more traffic then, but you could get more opt-ins as well. That leads to more potential customers.

Also read: 10 Website Popup Rules to Follow for Great Engagement

Content Marketing

Did you write an exemplary piece of content that you want the world to know about? Try slipping a link to it in your email signature.

This link should not overwrite the links to your website or social media feeds in your email signature.

Instead, you want to give the content its own fresh link. Write a CTA (call to action) to draw attention to your content.

Then sit back and watch as the page views for the article climb thanks to your simple promotional effort via your email signature.

Brand Awareness & Credibility

Has your company done something cool lately? Maybe you had a great user rating or received an award. Perhaps you have a glowing testimonial you want to showcase.

Try adding some (not all) of these accolades to your email signature.

The above are all forms of social proof. If you want to convert leads to customers, social proof is one awesome way you can do so.

When your leads read your email and see you come highly recommended, that increases their trust in you.

By fostering that trust through engagement and nurturing, you can convert them to customers.

Lead Generation and Conversion

Speaking of conversions, email signatures, in general, can help drive sales conversions.

You can also generate more leads with simple email signatures. If you’ve written a new blog post or you want to promote an ebook, you can include the download link in your email signature.

By providing a call to action, you encourage the recipient to take the action you want. This also includes asking the reader to download a list or resource, connect on social media, or even opt into a newsletter.

You then have the contact details of the lead and can get to work on beginning the conversion process.

How to Make a Professional Email Signature

The above benefits speak for themselves. Now that you’re well aware you need a professional email signature, how do you go about making one?

There are a number of email signature generator software out there, but our suggestion is to craft one of your own.

Here are a few other steps to keep in mind.

Don’t Exceed Four Lines

You may have a handful of elements to include in your professional email signature, but extending it beyond four lines is a bit much.

Also, the length of each email signature line is important. You don’t want to give your recipients too many choices and overwhelm them.

Use an Image

Your email signatures are as much visual as text-based. You can add a picture of yourself to help your professional email signature stand out.

The other advantage of using your face is that you can foster a sense of trust with your would-be customers. They see your face and know they’re communicating with a real person, not some bot.

That can go a long way towards getting you a response to your email.

Add a Logo

All email signatures need a good logo. Make sure to include your company’s logo in your professional email signature. It humanizes a company, personalizes the email, and helps with brand recognition.

Not only does this add some much-needed color to all those lines of text, but it injects some professionalism to your email signature as well. An email signature generator will give you the option to upload a logo of your choosing.

Don’t Forget Mobile Optimization

You need a proper email signature that looks good for phone users, tablet users, and laptop users.

That means ensuring you optimize your email signatures. If a user with a phone reads your email, the email signature shouldn’t look pinched or cut-off.

As you know, most people who read emails will do so on their phones. Therefore, mobile optimization is a must.

Sample Email Signatures

We’ve talked a lot about what good email signatures should and shouldn’t include, but what does it all look like when it’s put together?

Here are some great examples of email signatures.

Event Promotions Signature

Image courtesy of NEWOLDSTAMP

The only issue with this email signature is that it lacks the person’s full name. Otherwise, it’s pretty much perfect, except for the fact that it’s a template and doesn’t have real contact information.

It’s colorful, with that bright green scheme seen throughout, even in some text. The social sharing buttons are green as well, an interesting choice.

You can see this Volodymyr because he included a clear image of himself. There’s also a nice CTA at the bottom, the “Let’s meet at MarketCon” graphic.

Since this event lasts just three days, obviously, once MarketCon ends, we’re sure Volodymyr would change the email signature to something else.

Still, if you’re trying to promote a limited-time event, try using this as a template.

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Awards Signature

Image courtesy of Mail-signatures.com

We like the simple but effective colors as well.

You can also see a disclaimer in use here. This one protects John Doe and his company from confidentiality issues. If you want a clean, professional signature you can use this as a template.

Simple but Clean Design Email Signature

Image courtesy of Envato Tuts+

You don’t always need white background for your signature. This one might be a template, but it sure looks clean, right?

The grayish/black background doesn’t hurt to look at, nor does the white text. That’s important since you don’t want to give your readers a headache as they navigate your email signature.

Instead, the background color looks clean and stark.

There are three lines of text, and the way they’re divided makes great use of space. We also like the image in that it has a hexagon frame.

Circles are much more common, so again, this email signature template stands out for the right reasons.

Off-the-Wall Signature

We decided to end on a unique note. The above example is creative and colorful.

This email signature reflects the person’s profession. You can see that she has given her own unique twist to it. The social sharing buttons are unconventional but eye-catching.

For a graphic designer, this email signature certainly leaves an impression.

Conclusion

A good email signature can help your business in many ways. You can generate leads, promote content, convert customers, and boost site traffic.

You can create a free email signature by using a free email signature generator software or do it by yourself, with the tips and the email signature examples we shared in this article. An unforgettable signature is the simplest way of getting customers to connect with your business.

If you want to design a clean, professional, and mobile-friendly email template to go with the signature, sign up for EngageBay today!