I recently had to change my email signature. It was something I hadn’t thought about in a long time, as I’d been using the same one for years. As I worked through changing it to be more in line with our company’s evolving image, I learned a few things about what makes a good signature.
Email signatures have evolved over the years, and while there are many schools of thought on how to make a good one, there’s a few things that pretty much anyone can agree makes for a good closing signature to an email.
Keep it simple. Name, title, phone number, and website are all you need. If you feel it’s advantageous, feel free to include your social media links. You don’t need your email address, they are already reading your email, so they have your email address. But, including it can make it easier for people to copy it into their contacts list. In Mac Mail, for example, it’s a few extra clicks to pull it from the top of a message.
Avoid wacky colors. Stick with one or two matching colors in addition to plain black text.
Avoid using image files. Some people include their photo or another image in their signature. I prefer to avoid this. Often, my email app will block images for security purposes, resulting in an empty box where someone’s picture is meant to be. You can avoid this by sticking with text only.
Stay on brand. If every member of your organization has a different signature, your business can come across as disorganized. Come up with a standard signature for everyone, so all they have to do is add their personal info to a ready-made template. This ensures all email sent out by your organization has a singular look, rather than a mishmash of different fonts and colors.
