Optimizing your email Signature So it Will Work for You
Your email signature can be a very important part of your emails. It can relay that information to your email recipients that you can’t in the body of your email because, if you did, it would seem out of place. However, you have to make that information work for you. Email signatures need to be short, but they also need to be effective. If not, the individual reading the email will completely ignore the e-mail signature at the bottom of your email.
So it is important that you know what features a professional email signature should possess. Those features are:
- You should have no more than 7 lines. The best email signatures are short and to the point.
- Don’t throw in any images or anything that distracts from the message. There is also the fact that images and other “cutesy” things will cause your email to be tagged as spam and placed in the recipient’s spam folder.
- Don’t use hyperlinks to websites because the hyperlinks can become broken. You can spell out the web address. If it is clickable, that is great. If not, they can copy and paste it into their browser’s address bar. They can’t do that if you create a hyperlink that simply says, “My Website.” A professional email signature is a functional one.
- Make sure the contact info you include is information that is needed by the email recipient. Don’t include contact information that is personal or you will never leave work. It will always find you.
- Throw something promotional in there. This means give something away for free to your recipients.
- You can use a border to separate your signature from your actual email. That way the recipient knows the difference.
These are some of the most important parts of an email signature for you to take into consideration. However, you may be thinking, “How am I supposed to make this look and feel the way it is supposed to so people will really like me?” Well, there is a solution to this. You could always use an email signature template to get it done. You could also use WiseStamp www.wisestamp.com, which is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize your email signature in such email programs as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL Mail. Any social media and services can be linked and instant messenger icons can be included. It is done in a way that doesn’t make the recipient think, “Eww, this is every kind of messy and then some.” This is because there are some email signatures that come through to their email inbox that are very messy and not very easy to understand. There is just way too much going on. WiseStamp does keep that from happening due to support of special characters and allowing you the ability to fully customize your email signature.
So keep in mind that you don’t have to include every piece of information in the world, but that you can have a nice, organized email signature that can really get the message across.
