How to Create an Email Signature

There are many mistakes that people make when creating their email signatures, but some mistakes are more obvious than others. Email signatures are often seen as an important marketing tool, so you should make sure your email signature ticks all the right boxes before you start sending out emails. A broken email signature can also work in the exact opposite way, it can tell your customers that you don’t know what you are doing and you aren’t serious about making a good impression.

Let’s talk about some of the most common pitfalls and mistakes that people make with email signatures.

Design

Often people don’t consider the design work required when creating an email signature. Have a look at some email signature templates and pick out the ones that look good to you. The design work can often be tedious and take a lot of trial and error style testing in order to get it right. Consider what your brand colors are and try to integrate them into your styling.

Fonts

So you may think that fonts don’t really matter in email signatures, but they definitely do. Don’t just choose any font and go with it, as all this will do is cause embarrassment because your recipient may not have the same font installed and will just see crypt writing on their screen because their computer doesn’t know how to display your font. Some fonts don’t come pre-installed on some operating systems. Here is a list of common fonts for email signatures. If you use these fonts, you will most likely make an email signature that is compatible with multiple devices.

Sign-Off

Which sign-off you use is up to you, but there are many different meanings for which one you use. Although it may not seem like a big deal, try to use one of the professional and common sign-offs, such as best regards, kind regards or best wishes. Most people use best regards, as it has multiple meanings so that is a safe one to stick with. There is nothing worse than seeing a professional email come through with a sign-off like “Love, Hannah”. If it doesn’t sound right to you, then you probably shouldn’t be emailing it to your customers.

Contact Details

There is great debate whether you should include your email address in the email signature, and depending who you ask, will depend on the answer you get. Generally speaking, most people agree that you shouldnt put your email address into your email signature, as it is clearly visible in your email client, so there is no need for it.

These are the most common contact details to have:

• Name
• Position
• Company
• Phone Number
• Address
• Website
• Social Icons

Don’t Put Too Many Details

We have all seen those email signatures that tell the persons life story at the end of an email, and no one likes them. They not only use precious space on an email server, but they are useless and dont add any value to your email signature, nor does it convey professionalism.

Social Icons

Social icons are a must for email signatures as they make it easy to get more followers. There is no easier way to get more followers or subscribers than to get them through email signatures. Often people will not put social icons into their email signautres, as they are afraid that the business might look amateur and not professional, but social networking is the new professional, everyone uses it and so should you.