Some feel that adding an email signature to professional or business emails may be a waste of time and space, but it can actually be quite beneficial. Plus, it doesn’t have to be complicated. The benefits of an email signature are twofold:
The anatomy of an email signature will be different for everybody, as there are any number of components that you can choose to include. Look through your inbox at the email signatures you encounter and you’ll undoubtedly find:
Takeaway: Keep in mind that it is not necessary to use all of the information listed above, and you really shouldn’t. The usage of the information will depend on the type of business that you have and what your marketing/branding goals are. The key to a successful email signature is the idea that less is more. This will help to make a positive and lasting impression.
The challenges of developing a professional email signature boil down to the fact that there are different email clients (each with various personal settings), different operating systems (e.g. Windows vs Apple), and different devices (mobile vs desktop). All of these factors affect the reliability of your email signature being displayed as you expect.
Email signatures typically behave very predictably when transmitted between similar environments, such as an email message being sent between two iPhones. But, you can’t control how somebody opens your email. For instance, your email may travel from Gmail to iPhone to Outlook before it comes back to your Gmail account — and in a case like that, it will likely come back looking different from when you first sent it. While your email signature may look perfect to you when you are composing your email, it is impossible to control what happens after you hit “Send”. This is a big reason why email signatures should be kept as simple as possible.
Be prepared to compromise, and recalibrate your expectations to understand that there is no “perfect” email signature. It is simply the nature of email. If this fact causes you a great deal of distress, you will want to stick with a very bare-bones text-only signature.
Email signatures can be tricky due to 1) differences in HTML rendering and 2) unpredictable image handling. Understanding that these factors can and will affect your email presentation should entice you to take the necessary steps to optimize the signature as much as possible.
An email signature is written in HTML code just like a website. Unfortunately, email clients are notoriously less reliable in rendering HTML than browsers do of your website. Different email clients may render HTML in a slightly different way.
This is not generally a show-stopping issue, but for those that are expecting pixel-perfect results every time, note that font replacements or differences in line spacing are likely in store for your email signature.
There is no magic formula to get images to behave perfectly 100% of the time. And you are often at the mercy of the user, who must agree to “show images” which are initially blocked by default. While you may find you can copy and paste images into your email, the most reliable way is to link to your image where it is hosted on your web server. This preferred method will minimize the chances of them showing up as attachments.
Images that have traveled through space and time and back sometimes lose the ability to display. Images that don’t display will simply show the file name where the image should be. With multiple images in a single email signature, you don’t want it to be littered with <myimage1.gif>, which makes it look like it is full of mistakes. This is common with social media icons. In this case, you may want to forego using the icons at all and simply use text links like so: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn
Some believe that an email signature, to be consistent and worry-free across all situations, should just forego including images at all. This prevents unnecessary attachments and ensures you can better control how it looks. This decision boils down to your own personal/corporate preference.
Whether this is your first email signature rodeo or you are a seasoned pro, there are several points to consider the next time you create a new one.
If the task seems too daunting, or you want to make sure it’s done right, you can always hire a professional to design and implement your email signature. Many graphic or web designers are well-equipped to handle the task with relative ease, and most importantly, will help you avoid the most common mistakes made with email signatures.
Email signatures help to tell your contacts about your company and more importantly, how to stay in touch with you! When used correctly, they can be a very valuable marketing tool. When used the wrong way, they can have a negative impact on how people view your professional image.
So often, when working on websites or landing pages, the client adamantly states, “We need to get all that above the fold.” I’m always curious if they’re saying it because they’ve heard it was an unbreakable rule, or if they have specific data to support their request. It’s important to know that “above the fold” alone is not a magic bullet for a successful page.
Your brain has everything to do with why it’s important to make sure your site loads quickly. Keep your customers coming by optimizing your site’s speed.
